In addition to its impenetrability, Excel has the annoying quirk that the (very simple!) formula you enter to create a running balance sometimes comes unstuck for no discernible reason, giving you an incorrect balance. I gave up after several efforts at trying to call upon those spirits.
However, only a Druid could comprehend the instructions in Excel’s Help file. Yeah, I know there’s something called a “pivot report,” and yes, I do suspect it could solve all my problems. When “sorting” data, Excel wants to put numbered items before alphabetical items so, if you preface each tax-related category with a numeral, the “sort” function will gather all the tax-relevant categories together. One is that it makes sense to number tax-related categories (1, 2, 3…), so a “sort” command will bring them up at the top of the “sorted” spreadsheet. This made it possible to summarize tax-related data while also making all the year’s transactions, organized by budget category, easily visible and transparent to her.Ī number of revelations ensued as I tried to organize this material for the tax accountant. Typical headers for bank account Tracking credit-card spending against an $800 budgetĬome the first of this year, I created what I hope is an intelligible spreadsheet for the accountant by merging data from the credit-card spreadsheet with the bank-account spreadsheet entries and then sorting all the data by category. The latter allowed me to reset the balance each month to the amount budgeted for discretionary spending (which is all that goes on my credit cards), so that the bottom line showed how much was left in any given month’s allowance.
This entailed creating spreadsheets for each bank account, laid out in identical patterns, plus another spreadsheet for credit-card charges. To build the new Excel workbook, I tried to ape the accounts and functions of Quicken. It’s useful to know that Microsoft now offers a variety of home and office financial management templates, designed to work with Excel. However, a rudimentary understanding of Excel’s functions allowed me to build checking and savings accounts and to massage the data into something that I think will be intelligible for my tax accountant. A year of manipulating Quicken left me with a black belt in Advanced Quickening. After a year of working with it, I’d say my skills are no better than they were at the outset. But there they are: something to try if your patience with Intuit wears thin.Įxcel has one helluva learning curve, especially for those of us with English-major math skills. Not having tried one of these programs, I hesitate to state that any are better, worse, or the same as Quicken. Programs such as (which, alas, was purchased by Intuit), Buxfer, MoneyStrands, Pear Budget, or Thrive sometimes do that sort of thing, and of course Mint will now interact with TurboTax. If you want to integrate your bookkeeping with your banking and investing, however, there are alternatives, some of them out there in the Cloud.
Excel talks to you and only to you (or so we hope). Nor does Excel care to converse with TurboTax, Intuit’s tax preparation software.
Quicken lets you upload and download transactions and data from those august institutions. Biggest negative: it can’t talk to your bank or your investment house.
It appears I’m not alone in those sentiments.Įxcel has its advantages and its disadvantages vis à vis Quicken.
After years as a Quicken customer, I’d really lost patience: data vanished in the transfer from Windows to Mac, Quicken for Mac was clunky, and I’d long ago had it with having to upgrade to a pricey new version every time I turned around. Last January I switched to Excel for tracking my bank accounts, budget, and credit card charges. So…how’s the bookkeeping working, after a year of using Excel instead of Quicken for Mac? Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Email