Hi all
Cba netbank does this but it's not very good
I would find it interesting to do a yearly data dump of all transactions in netbank to categorise where money was spent and to identify any trends
Does anyone know of any software that does this
Thanks
I don't think YNAB can do a bulk automatic categorisation from an import. It will learn the categorization for future transactions so there is a manual step first.
Pocketbook does this, it's more geared towards doing it continuously and budgetting.
I've found it needs a bit of help figuring out what smaller shops are, or they'll sit in the uncategorised box
Has Pocketbook introduced splitting of receipts/purchases yet? I haven't used it for years because I couldn't split spending categories for a store
You can recategorise a payment manually. I don't see a way to split a single payment into multiple sections
Yeah it's the splitting that's the dealbreaker for me. Like verio mentions below, spending $x amount at Amazon can be an order of food, alcohol, toys or clothes but Pocketbook only allowed you to have one category for the total spend.
It is worth mentioning that automatic categorisation will not be very accurate. It is not always possible to derive what you have purchased just based on the merchant name.
Say you spent $1000 on Amazon this year. Did you buy PS5? Did you buy groceries? Or maybe nappies for your baby? Your bank or Pocketbook has no way of knowing that.
To get accurate spending reports, you need to do manual spending tracking which requires time and discipline.
CBA allows you to dump your transactions as a CSV into Excel and you can go from there.
I track every cent I spend in Excel. Even after 1 week I can not remember what I bought where. Good luck with a years data!! Many merchant names are meaningless eg "So and so trading", "Suburb industries", "xyz hospitality" etc.
Agree 100% on this problem. I've been at various banks on and off for years about this problem and the need to ensure the names on transaction statements reflect the trading name of the merchant … unsurprisingly it's fallen on deaf ears, but sheer volume of these "ambiguous" transactions makes keeping on top of your accounts very problematic.
I track every cent I spend in Excel
Nice work for doing that! I've used YNAB for 10 years but after their recent price increase, I'm looking around for alternatives. Reddit has uncovered some free Google sheets but I would like automatic bank sync. I'm currently trying Pocketsmith and will decide whether to switch or not next month.
Same, but I use google sheets because of the user form functionality that makes it easy to make an entry from your phone.
How do you manage it with excel?
Dependent drop down lists, and then just religiously doing it every day or two
@Presence: do you mean rounding up receipts every two days and entering into excel? Is this all on PC or do you use your phone too?
@andresampras: Yep entering every 2 days. I try to ask for paper receipts, if I don't get one then I make a note in Google Tasks. But otherwise it's all on the desktop.
@Presence: ah ok. Have you been doing this long?
I go through periods where I get lazy and stop. Which really kills the annual overview :-/
@andresampras: Almost two years I've tracked every single cent. I think unless you get a whole year it's hard to many observations as many things are seasonal (gas for heating in winter, electricity for AC in summer) or one-offs (car insurance, home insurance).
Excel is great cause you can do pivot tables and graphs so easily. Any software seemed quite constrained.
@Presence: yeah agreed re. ready-made software. Setting up your own customised tracker isn't so much difficult as just more effort initially, but much nicer to use - which leads to better chance of everyone in the family using it regularly.
I’m with a few banks and the best tracking I’ve seen is with Virgin Money (using the Flyer card) surprisingly. In my experience it tracks approx 90% spend categories somewhat accurately, although I don’t spend a lot so the categories are relatively simple, e.g. groceries, health & pharmacy, restaurants & cafes etc. It would work for a quick and dirty analysis but wouldn’t be 100% accurate, and if you wanted more specificity you’d have to dive in and manually categorise merchants.
The most accurate way to do this would be to track your spending manually IMO. I personally use an app called Daily Budget (iOS) and just record every transaction in there. Not too time consuming once you make a habit of it.
Macquarie Bank has this feature - has a categories and notes section which assigns some tags automatically. qif or csv are downloadable from the desktop version.
It's still not my main bank account yet but have considered making the switch from ING.
Macquarie is super. Most of the times the automatic categorisation is correct, but sometimes you have to manually change it in the app.
You Need A Budget might do this, it has a few different ways it pivots data [but it is also a very specific 'forward looking' category of thinking]