How To Use Microsoft S Money In Excel To Manage Your Finances

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 27, 2025, 8:45 PM

how to use microsoft s money in excel to manage your finances

Money in Excel is a dynamic template for Excel that can help you feel more in control of your money. It's the only template where you can securely connect your financial institutions to import and sync account and transaction information into an Excel spreadsheet. Track all your finances in one place, customize your workbook, and receive personalized tips without ever leaving Excel. Note: Money in Excel is a premium template that is available as part of the Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscription. Currently, Money in Excel is only available in the United States and can connect to most major financial institutions. For the best experience, we recommend using Money in Excel on a laptop or desktop.

Securely connect bank, credit card, investment, and loan accounts to view your financial information all in one place without ever leaving Excel. Keep your workbook up to date by syncing your latest transactions and account balances. Gain insight into your finances with charts, graphs, and alerts based on your data. If you want to manage your financial accounts but don’t need a full-featured and expensive program like Quicken, Microsoft offers a free add-on service called Money in Excel. This option helps you integrate your bank accounts and other financial data into Excel so you can track your expenses, spending habits, investments, and more. The Money in Excel template can retrieve account information at most major financial institutions.

Access to your accounts is performed through a third-party plugin provided by Plaid, which handles permissions between you and Microsoft. You connect your financial data to Plaid, but Plaid does not share login credentials with Microsoft. (For more information about the security and privacy aspects of this feature, check out Microsoft’s Money in Excel FAQ.) As a premium Excel template, Money in Excel is available to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers in the US. The feature is accessible only on the desktop; it won’t work on mobile. Here’s how to use Money in Excel to manage your personal finances right from a spreadsheet.

Before you can start using Money in Excel, you must first add it to your instance of Excel. To grab the Money template, go to Microsoft’s Money in Excel page and sign in as a Microsoft 365 subscriber. Click Edit in Browser to add the template to the browser-based version of Excel or click Download to get it for the desktop version of the program. Both versions work the same. If you want to use Money in Excel anywhere from any computer, choose the browser-based version. If you want to restrict it to just specific computers on which Excel is installed locally, go with the download option.

This blog post is your ultimate guide to how to manage your finances with Microsoft Excel. So, if you’re intimidated by the idea of using Microsoft Excel to manage your finances, you’re in the right place. You will learn how to use Microsoft Excel to manage and save money. Managing personal finances is a daunting prospect for most people. But having the right tools can help make it less challenging. While most people use Excel to track their budgets, manually updating your budget spreadsheet every month is a time-consuming process.

By connecting your bank, loan, and credit card accounts, you can budget your money easily using Money in Excel. If you've already set up Money in Excel but haven't spent much time with it yet, here's how you can make the most of it. Microsoft will shut down "Money in Excel" after June 2023. Money in Excel consists of a template with an add-in. It doesn't offer a direct internet connection that runs in the background. So although you connect your accounts and save the file, you must sign in each time you open it.

In addition, you'll need to manually update it to receive your latest transactions and balances. So, open your Money in Excel file and click "Get Started" in the pane on the right. If you don't see the "Money in Excel" pane, go to the "Home" tab and click "Money in Excel" on the right side of the ribbon. On the next screen in the pane, click "Sign In" and enter your Microsoft 365 username and password. Managing your money in a spreadsheet is a classic for a reason, but manually entering every transaction can be tedious. Microsoft’s "Money in Excel" feature was designed to solve this by automatically syncing your financial accounts directly with your worksheet, marrying the power of Excel with real-time financial data.

This guide will walk you through how Money in Excel worked and explore how you can still apply its principles to manage your finances effectively. Money in Excel was a premium template and add-in available for Microsoft 365 subscribers that transformed a standard spreadsheet into a dynamic personal finance dashboard. Its primary function was to connect securely to your bank, credit card, investment, and loan accounts, and then import your transaction data and account balances directly into Excel. This eliminated the need for manual data entry, giving you a constantly updated view of your financial life. The feature used the trusted third-party service, Plaid, to link to over 10,000 financial institutions in the United States. Once connected, you could refresh your data with a single click, categorize your spending, track your net worth, and build custom financial reports using all the familiar tools Excel offers.

A Quick Note: Microsoft officially discontinued Money in Excel on June 30, 2023. While the template is no longer available to new users and will not update for existing users, understanding its workflow is still incredibly valuable. The principles of tracking transactions, categorizing expenses, and visualizing data remain the gold standard for personal finance management, and you can replicate many of its features using other methods within Excel. If you were a Microsoft 365 subscriber in the U.S. before its discontinuation, setting up Money in Excel was a straightforward process. Here’s a look at how it functioned, which can serve as a blueprint for your own financial tracking system.

Managing your personal finances can feel overwhelming, but Microsoft Excel makes it simpler and more empowering. With its versatile features, you can track expenses, plan for big goals, and ensure financial stability. Here’s how to use Excel to master your money. Understanding where your money goes is the first step to financial clarity. A budget ensures you’re spending intentionally and saving consistently. From vacations to down payments, big goals require careful planning.

Tracking debt helps you stay on top of payments and reduce financial stress. Important: As of June 30, 2023, Money in Excel will no longer be supported. Please see their FAQ. By connecting your bank, loan, and credit card accounts, you can budget your money easily using Money in Excel. If you’ve already set up Money in Excel but haven’t spent much time with it yet, here’s how you can make the most of it. Microsoft Money in Excel consists of a template with an add-in.

It doesn’t offer a direct internet connection that runs in the background. So although you connect your accounts and save the file, you must sign in each time you open it. In addition, you’ll need to manually update it to receive your latest transactions and balances. So, open your Money in Excel file and click “Get Started” in the pane on the right. If you don’t see the “Money in Excel” pane, go to the “Home” tab and click “Money in Excel” on the right side of the ribbon. On the next screen in the pane, click “Sign In” and enter your Microsoft 365 username and password.

How To Use Microsoft S Money In Excel To Manage Your Finances

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