Import Bank Transactions

In order to import live bank transactions, you must first have a linked bank account.

Importing bank transactions is the core value proposition of BudgetSheet, and is something you will likely be doing pretty often - hopefully about once a week or so if you are watching your budget closely, and at least once a month if you are just using BudgetSheet to reconcile all your transactions after the fact to see how you did. All imported transactions will go into the BSA_Transactionsspreadsheet, with the most recent transactions on bottom.

Importing Bank Transactions Between Specific Dates

Start the process by opening the transaction import sidebar via the menu: Extensions > BudgetSheet > Fetch Latest Bank Transactions...

Fetch Latest Bank Transactions via the BudgetSheet Menu
Fetch Latest Bank Transactions via the BudgetSheet Menu

When you click on this menu item, a sidebar will open on the far right side of your spreadsheet:

The "Fetch Latest Bank Transactions" sidebar with a start and end date for importing bank transactions into your Google Spreadsheet via BudgetSheet
The "Fetch Latest Bank Transactions" sidebar with a start and end date for importing bank transactions into your Google Spreadsheet via BudgetSheet

This dialog has the following form fields:

  1. Start Date - Blank on first fetch, but pre-filled with the last transaction fetch date from then on.
  2. End Date - Pre-filled with today's date, but can be changed to any date desired.

The date inputs expect a mm/dd/yyyy date format, which you can either manually enter, or use your browser's built-in popup calendar to select a different date.

The "Fetch Latest Bank Transactions" sidebar showing common date presets
The "Fetch Latest Bank Transactions" sidebar showing common date presets

Fetching Bank Transactions

Once your dates are set correctly, click on the blue Fetch Transactions button. This will begin the process of fetching and sorting all your bank transactions from Plaid.

Please be patient while all your bank transactions are imported into the BSA_Transactions spreadsheet. It will be worth it!

It may take up to several minutes to import all your bank transactions, depending on how many transactions you have across all your accounts.


Autofetch

BudgetSheet has an Autofetch function that allows you to quickly fetch all transactions from the last time transactions were fetched.

Autofetch can fetch transactions for you automatically every day
Autofetch can fetch transactions for you automatically every day

Troubleshooting

If several minutes have passed, you still don't see any new transactions, and it seems like the import process has finished (there are several small status updates along the way), then you can check theBSA_Log spreadsheet for system-level details on what BudgetSheet is doing in the background. Sometimes an error will occur during the process that causes BudgetSheet to abort the import without proper notification.

Scan the BSA_Log spreadsheet for clues on what might have happened or where the error is. Most of the time, any transaction fetch errors are because of a bad or outdated connection to a bank account. To fix the connection, you can manually delete the account's rows from the BSA_Settings spreadsheet, and then re-link the bank account via the menu option Extensions > BudgetSheet > Link New Bank Account...


If you are happy with BudgetSheet and would like to import transactions from all your accounts, please consider supporting it by upgrading to BudgetSheet Pro.

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Made by Vance Lucas of Actridge, LLC