Posts: 15,647
Threads: 1,310
Joined: Aug 2013
Reputation:
0
Might go for Quicken but must first know these,
-Can Quicken import Excel? It must, I suppose.
-Once you categorize Shell as "Fuel" in one spreadsheet do you have to do it again when you import another spread sheet? In other words, can you define global categories that apply to different spreadsheets?
-Can you have partial matches in Description field and ignore the rest? so Bill's Shell Station and Shell would both be found as Shell.
Posts: 7,411
Threads: 545
Joined: Aug 2022
Quicken will not import Excell (that I know of). Intuit uses a propriatary file format called QIF to move accounts from one file to another or Mac<->PC and the process is not very intuitive.
That said, as far as setting up categories, it's pretty easy. You can use their predefined business or personal ones or make up your own. (If you customize and change computers, you'll need to have a copy of your custom categories for the new workflow). Setting up cats is pretty easy. You use common english words for Cats and Sub Cats. For example if you set up an Account for Auto Expenses you can have sub cats for things like gas, insurance, maintenance etc. Or you may choose to set up a Cat for Insurance with sub cats for Life, Home, Auto, Health etc.
The auto fill feature is nice. Once you make an entry for Bill's Shell Station, Category "gas" (or Shell Gas) the next time you make a payment and type in "Bill's" everying else auto fills and all you have to do is adjust the amount. You can set up Cat for Auto Expenses, sub cats Shell gas, Exxon gas, BP gas, Hess gass, on an on if you want to track how much you spent with each brand, but you can also see (do a report) on just GAS and see all your gas expenses listed and sub totaled by brand.
My accountant reduced my tax preperation bill by $25.00 when I started using Quicken years ago because I could generate detailed or summary reports at tax time that made his work easier. :-)
Posts: 316
Threads: 5
Joined: Jan 2016
Swampy is corrrect - Quicken does not import Excel documents, you would need to convert them to QIF format. I imagine that someone very clever with Excel could design a macro to convert to QIF - I remember that I'd used to keep financial information that I copied from a previous 401K provider's website in an Excel worksheet and somehow managed to get it into QIF.
(Ha - maybe something like this:http://xl2qif.chez-alice.fr/xl2qif_en.php )
There is also shareware called 'QIF Master' which can take Excel CSV (comma separated values, exported from Excel) and convert to QIF. It's what I use nowdays to convert my 401k transaction lists to QIF so I can import into Quicken.
