Money in Excel vs Quicken - Which Is the Best for Finances? (2024)

In the year of 1991, Microsoft made a personal approach to financial data, both personal finances, and business finances, through the creation of Microsoft Money software. This software was intended to compete with Quicken, a classic personal finance management application. Sadly, this program was discontinued in 2009, leaving a hole in Microsoft’s financial portfolio.

Luckily for all the people who used to utilize Money for their finance, Microsoft has released new Money in Microsoft Excel service. In this Money in Excel vs Quicken, we address the main differences and similarities between both services.

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Microsoft Excel is a major data management and analysis software part of the Microsoft Office suite. This application allows users to organize data in spreadsheets, apply simple and complex mathematical formulas and calculations, analyze data through functions, and display visualizations in graphs, tables, charts, pivot tables, and much more! You can also perform database operations on the data stored in your worksheets.

And Money in Excel?

With Money in Excel, you can securely connect bank, investment, credit card, and loan accounts to view your financial information in one place. Of course, you'll also be able to keep your workbook up to date by syncing your account balances and the latest transactions.

Quicken is a personal finance management software application that runs on Windows and Mac computers developed by Intuit. Its data is compatible with both operating systems. Quicken was designed for financial planning activities, a budget, recording bank transactions, measuring progress, and tracking investments and their prices and performances.

This platform also allows you to automate any process, and get superb analytics via multi-level coding capability. Still, Quicken does not support custom functions. All its processes are pre-built. Then, the only thing you need to do is implement the functions with your financial data.

Note. Quicken is only available for purchase and use in Canada and the United States and only in English.

Money on Excel works through an add-in feature. In order for you to access this service, you need to download a special Excel template.

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.

Money on Excel is mainly used to link bank accounts through Plaid, an application that provides APIs (Application Programming Interface) for free. Besides, Plaid works with dozens of developers to create easy experiences and help people to connect their financial institutions to applications they usually use. Currently, Plaid links to about 11,000 global financial institutions.

Thanks to Plaid, you can choose which accounts you want to feed into your spreadsheet. Then you can trigger manual updates.

To update data in your workbook, you need to open your spreadsheet and select “Update” to move the transactions from the Microsoft database into the spreadsheet.

Plaid moves new balances and transactions from your most major financial institutions at least once a day.

Money in Excel integrates two main templates to track workflows. The first is called “Net worth,” which helps you to insert a list of all your financial accounts into a worksheet. The second is called “Recurring Expenses.” Thanks to this, you can keep track of money by highlighting transactions through a list of all your accounts. You can easily select the one you need or prefer to use and add it to the Excel workbook with just one click.

Note: You can’t rename accounts or re-organize them, but in total, these reports provide a way to see account balances and totals for all assets and all liabilities.

Money in Excel is very useful for both – the finances of small businesses and personal finances. Thanks to this template, you can do the following:

• Keep track of your money. You can connect your bank account to Excel and check all your transactions in one document. This way, you understand how you’re spending your money.
• Achieve your financial goals. You’ll receive personalized insights about your expenses and monthly spending, bank fees, general prices, and much more. Thanks to this, you’ll be always on top of your finances.
• Customize your workbook. Thanks to customization, you can make your money work for you. You can also leverage the tailored charts or build your own personalized tables by using your favorite features for financial information.

The money template includes five default sheets. The core value happens on the last two sheets: transactions and categories.

• Welcome worksheet;
• Instructions sheet;
• Snapshot sheet;
• Transactions sheet;
• Categories sheet.

The transaction sheet is where the transactions come when you update your registries. This sheet will fill automatically while doing this. Here you can build reports on your spendings.

The categories sheet is where all your transactions are divided and organized. You can’t modify them because every transaction fits into one of these categories.

Quicken was designed for managing spending, creating budgets, viewing and paying bills, planning for retirement, tracking investments, managing a small organization and your investment portfolio, and property and inventory management.

But, How Does Quicken track all your expenses and spending?

You can securely connect Quicken to over 14,000 financial institutions and avoid risks. This way, Quicken will display all your accounts and transactions in one place. You’ll be able to see this information on a desktop version, on a phone, or app.

Quicken also allows you to track and search transactions by the payee and/or amount, and catch and flag illegitimate transactions. This way, you have more control over your account information and personal finances.

Quicken displays clear graphs and charts, so you can understand your latest transactions and download reports based on the information of your financial accounts. You can also get a clear picture of your income vs your expenses.

Quicken also shows your bills through a dashboard to pay, track and manage your bills. To provide you with more security while paying, you can pay your bills online. Quicken will integrate all the payments in one place.

Quicken also lets you view yourretirement contributionsover time and create future models based on these contributions. This software will give you the solution to make changes if you see your contributions are good enough. All the tools that Quicken gives you allow you to create forecasts of your future needs.

Quicken is also essential to control all your investments in sight, This way, you can easily simplify your portfolio. This investing feature is fully customizable, then you can choose to see and track different investments and plan for the near and long term.

Reporting is also an important part of the Quicken services. With this, you’ll monitor all your business assets, profit, and loss, and even tax deductions directly on your computer. At the same time, you can save receipts, leases, invoicing, and other documents.

You can use Money in Excel with Microsoft 365, both Family and Personal. Customers can subscribe to the first option at USD$99.99 per year. This is an up to 6 people subscription and gives 1 TB of cloud storage per person. On the other hand, users can subscribe to Microsoft 365 Personal at USD$70 per year.

Another alternative is to acquire Microsoft Office 2021 Professional Plus Key Retail Global Key. This is a perpetual license that contains all the basic Microsoft apps, such as Excel, and other tools for most advanced computer science, such as Access. It’s also the cheaper option as it’s just a one-time purchase.

Quicken features several plans for different types of users. All of these plans offer simple budgeting, insights, and notifications to maximize your savings. You can subscribe to the basic plan at USD$3.49 per month. The Home & Business plan costs USD$9,99 per month (yearly subscription).

Both Money in Exel and Quicken are good alternatives for managing and tracking your personal or business finances. Both have great performance and few disadvantages. If you’re looking for professional services, then Quicken is your choice. But be aware of Quicken just can be used in the USA and Canada.

Money in Excel is a more universal tool since you can use it in any country. Its Money template will give a good approach to personal finance tracking and management. It also gives you a good benefit and allows you to track any transaction of your linked banks and institutions. Both are great solutions, but Excel is a choice more for individuals and personal finance.

There is another alternative: use Money in Google Sheets, but this is the subject of another article. Now, in RoyalCDKeys, you can acquire Microsoft Office 2021 for Excel and other helpful apps.