Money in Excel will track recurring expenses.
Money in Excel will divide up the worksheet into several tabs: a Welcome tab, an Instructions tab, and then separate tabs for a Snapshot overview, Categories, individual Transactions, and Recurring expenses. The connection between financial institutions like your bank will be managed by Plaid, which says that it has forged connections with 10,000 institutions across the United States. After granting permission for Plaid to connect a financial account with Money in Excel, Plaid will have access to the account’s balances, transaction history, and associated account information, like owner name and address, but not your Microsoft 365 login credentials, according to a Microsoft support document. Money in Excel will also use a dashboard to provide an overview of your spending. (Money in Excel will also alert you if these change, Microsoft says.) Microsoft That data is stored and tracked within Excel, using analytics to measure changes in your overall spending, for example, or to track recurring expenses like Netflix that carry over from month to month. Money in Excel consolidates your accounts from various services: your credit card provider, your bank, as well as any investments and retirement accounts you may own.
“With banks, brokerage firms and Web sites now providing a range of options for managing personal finances, the consumer need for Microsoft Money Plus has changed,” the company said at the time. Microsoft discontinued Microsoft Money because of the competition banks themselves offered. Money in Excel is not Microsoft Money, though the two products certainly seem very similar. Money in Microsoft Excel will pull in data from your bank and other financial sources.
Microsoft recommends that users store the Money in Excel spreadsheet in their OneDrive Personal Vault, which adds two-factor authentication if it’s not already turned on, and imposes a significantly reduced timeout period. (ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley noticed that the template is now live for download.) You’ll also be able to open the template in the mobile Excel app, but most of the live functionality will be missing. Now, Money in Excel is being offered as a downloadable template for either the Excel desktop app or the Excel online version, though you’ll need to subscribe to either Microsoft 365 Personal or the Family plan to be able to use it. Microsoft announced Money in Excel in April as part of a broader rollout of a consumer view for Microsoft Teams, as well as a general rebranding of Office 365 as Microsoft 365. Microsoft has begun rolling out “Money in Excel,” a one-stop dashboard within Microsoft Excel for viewing your day-to-day finances, including bank and credit card transactions.