How To Filter Transactions In Mint
Sympathise where your money is going. Align your spending with your values. Make your financial goals a reality. Obtain the liberty to live the life you've ever wanted.
A highly-optimized and easy-to-implement fiscal program can evangelize on all of the higher up. And if you've been following the Main Your Money series from the start, you're on track to create simply that.
In this article we'll walk through how to use Mint transactions to lay the foundation upon which you will build the money management system that can ability you lot to financial freedom. So grab your trowel, and let's go started!
A Epitomize Of Mint Functionality
We took a loftier-level wait at Mint'due south features not long ago in Personal Finance Made Easy: Primary Your Money With Mint. If you oasis't nevertheless read that article, I recommend you do so now as it will provide you with the necessary context for the rest of this post.
Mint not only prevents yous from ever forgetting to pay a bill on time, it also creates budgets for you and tracks your spending automatically so you can come across where your coin is going. I of information technology's best features is that it performs all of this without the need for any investment of fourth dimension or effort on your part. What makes all of this possible? The seemingly-insignificant Mint transaction.
While this guide will make the virtually sense if yous read information technology tiptop-to-lesser, you lot practice not demand to know all of what I will exist covering today to simply get started with Mint transactions. The beneath guide is an all-in-one introduction and comprehensive review of everything you will need to know nearly using Mint transactions as you lot get more than familiar with Mint's interface and more than advanced in your usage of it.
If you lot want to read only the basics you need to get started, click hither to jump ahead to the Master Your Money series activity items at the end of the article. There you will observe links which will straight you to the specific topics which you lot need to read. For those of you who want the total picture, read on!
Table of Contents
- one A Recap Of Mint Functionality
- ii Mint Transactions – The Bricks In Your Financial Foundation
- 3 Navigating The Mint Transactions Page
- 4 Mint Transaction Categories
- iv.i Personalizing Your Transaction Sub-Categories
- 4.1.1 Custom Sub-Categories I Utilize
- 4.2 Assigning Or Changing A Category For A Given Transaction
- iv.3 Categories Deserving Special Mention
- iv.i Personalizing Your Transaction Sub-Categories
- 5 Mint Transaction Details
- 5.1 Changing Transaction Date, Description & Category
- five.two Creating & Managing Transaction Rules
- 5.iii Splitting Transactions Into Multiple Categories
- five.3.1 How To Handle Sales Tax
- 5.4 Using Transaction Notes
- five.5 Marking Transactions As Duplicates
- 6 Filtering & Searching Mint Transactions
- half dozen.i Creating & Using Transaction Tags
- six.2 Searching Transactions
- 7 Boosted Features
- seven.1 Editing Multiple Transactions At Once
- 7.ii Calculation A Transaction Manually
- vii.3 Changing The Number Of Transactions Displayed Per Page
- seven.4 Exporting Transactions To Excel
- 8 Summary
- 9 Next Steps
Mint Transactions – The Bricks In Your Financial Foundation
Think of your private transactions in Mint every bit bricks that must exist laid in a level and uniform fashion to construct a long-lasting and high quality foundation for your money management system.
While Mint automatically imports and categorizes your transactions as they occur, information technology can't identify what you purchased with checks or cash and occasionally assigns a transaction to an incorrect category.
You'll be making important decisions later on based on how Mint understands and classifies your spending. Information technology is absolutely essential that you make sure Mint transactions are categorized as accurately as possible so you lot can fully trust Mint's reporting.
With this in mind, today I'll show you how to chop-chop construction, monitor, and query Mint transactions to ensure that the bricks in your financial foundation stay both straight and level equally they are laid.
Offset things kickoff, let me show you around a flake. The principal Mint transactions page looks like what you see below, although I've blurred some content for sake of privacy:
Every time Mint syncs with your bank accounts, it displays whatsoever new transactions it finds in the master grid section of this page. Transactions are listed in descending social club by transaction date. Transactions which are still pending in your bank accounts will exist identified with italics.
A date, vendor description, and amount are displayed for each transaction, along with an income or spending category which is automatically assigned by Mint.
Clicking anywhere inside a given row volition highlight a transaction and display additional details regarding it in the right sidebar. This info includes the vendor, specific account affected, and whatever notes yous've added to the transaction manually.
A pocket-sized info graph displaying spending within the assigned category for the terminal three months is as well displayed in the correct sidebar. It illustrates average spending by month equally well every bit a comparison to the U.Southward. average in the affected category.
Mint Transaction Categories
Transaction categories are where the magic happens in Mint. These puppies are what ability all of Mint'due south budgeting and trend reporting functionality. For example, if you have a upkeep set in Mint for the "Gas & Fuel" category, any transactions classified equally "Gas & Fuel" will exist counted as spending inside that budget.
Mint starts with a list of existing transaction categories and sub-categories for common areas of household spending. To explore the existing list, simply click on the upwardly and down arrows in the "Category" field for a given transaction.
Personalizing Your Transaction Sub-Categories
Over fourth dimension, you will likely find that you desire to personalize the list of available sub-categories in Mint so you tin can better monitor spending or ready budgets for more than specific income or spending types.
To add additional sub-categories, simply open up the listing as outlined above. Hover over a given category until the list of sub-categories within it displays, and you'll observe a "Add/Edit Category" option at the bottom. Selecting this link opens a window in which you can add additional sub-categories every bit desired:
Y'all'll notice in the above case that I accept added additional sub-categories to "Bills & Utilities" for the sake of being able to separately track the FFP household'south spending on Electricity, Natural Gas, and (formerly) Propane. Without these boosted categories, spending of all three types would simply be lumped into "Utilities".
Keeping your desired budgeting and reporting preferences in mind, piece of work through this above list and add any boosted sub-categories you lot think you'd like to take. There are no right or incorrect answers hither, it's all about what yous'd like to know about your spending.
Custom Sub-Categories I Employ
For sake of reference, I've listed the additional sub-categories below which I have identified a need or preference for over the concluding seven years:
- Automobile & Ship – Auto Wash, License Renewal, Plate Renewal, Tolls
- Bills & Utilities – Electric, Natural Gas, Propane
- Business concern Services – Website Hosting
- Fees & Charges – Closing Costs
- Fiscal – Investment Property
- Gifts & Donations – Tithe
- Wellness & Fitness – Birth Control, Vitamins/Supplements
- Abode – Home Association Fee, Home Downwardly Payment, Home Maintenance
- Income – Garage Sale, Online Auction, Revenue enhancement Refund
- Personal Care – Facial Products, Feminine Hygiene, Oral Hygiene, Toilet Paper, Toiletries
- Pets – Bird Food/Housing
- Shopping – Jewelry
- Taxes – Revenue enhancement Prep Fee
In that location's no pressure to go this completely dialed in right now, as you can add together or delete categories at will in future.
Assigning Or Irresolute A Category For A Given Transaction
Equally mentioned previously, Mint automatically assigns a category to each transaction. However, non every assigned category volition be correct. For case, a grocery run to Wal-Mart may be classified past Mint as "Shopping". To obtain the most authentic agreement of your spending, you lot would demand to re-assign this transaction to the "Groceries" sub-category inside "Food & Dining".
This is why it is important to monitor your Mint transactions on a semi-regular basis to brand whatever slight course corrections required. Doing so takes a minimal amount of fourth dimension, yet pays large dividends by giving you a thorough agreement of your spending via the Trends reporting.
To assign or alter a category for a given transaction, simply apply the up/downward arrows next to the currently assigned category from the filigree view, then select the desired replacement.
Categories Deserving Special Mention
At that place are 3 Mint categories which merit additional discussion. Transfer is the commencement of these and should be used for any transfer of money between your existing accounts. If this category is assigned to a transfer transaction in both accounts affected, the transaction volition correctly bear witness as net-neutral and volition not announced as spending or income for either business relationship.
The Hide From Budgets & Trends category should be used for any transactions you don't desire to appear as either income or spending. I typically use this category for returned purchases. Doing then ensures that the original purchase and ensuing refund transactions are excluded from reporting and spending and that categories such as "Shopping" are non overstated.
The Uncategorized category can be used to flag transactions which you believe demand to be assigned to a unlike category upon review. Uncategorized transactions evidence bolded in the grid overview for easy identification.
Uncategorized also contains two sub-categories – Cash & ATM and Check. Greenbacks spending for which you have no record on what it is spent on can simply be assigned to "Cash & ATM". You lot will not accept visibility into what this money was spent on, but can see the full in the category. Whatsoever checks written will be assigned to the "Cheque" category and will exist bolded. You can reassign these transactions to the category to which the spending belongs, if you know it.
Mint Transaction Details
When y'all click on a given transaction from the Mint Transactions page, you'll see a button titled "Edit Details" appear centered within the row. Selecting this button gives yous some additional data about and options for the transaction:
Changing Transaction Date, Description & Category
From time to time you lot may wish to change the date assigned to a transaction. Considering Mint budgets on a monthly ground, if a given transaction falls on the wrong side of the new month past just a single day it can mess with your budget calculations. If this happens you can make an aligning simply by clicking on the transaction date and selecting the new desired date from the carte that displays.
Similarly, you may occasionally wish to change the transaction description to make it easier to cover. Yous tin can do that from the details screen to a higher place by only selecting the field and entering the desired value.
You can alter or reassign a category from this screen in the aforementioned style that you tin can from the overview.
Creating & Managing Transaction Rules
Mint transaction rules are your friend. Once initially configured, these help Mint assign the correct category to certain transactions automatically. For instance, if the Consumer Reports transaction pictured above was initially categorized equally "Shopping", I could reassign it to "Newspapers & Magazines". After doing so, Mint would provide me with the selection to create a rule that any transaction from Consumer Reports should always exist assigned to this category.
While this obviously wouldn't work well for broad-based retailers like Wal-Mart or Amazon, it works incredibly well for i-off service providers and billers, particularly utilities.
You lot tin use rules to automatically rename and/or re-categorize transactions from a specific biller. To practise so, simply cheque the box shown on the class above. You can edit existing rules using the push button in Transaction Details or the hyperlink at the bottom right corner of the Transactions folio.
Splitting Transactions Into Multiple Categories
Y'all may exist wondering how to categorize transactions which consist of items belonging to several unlike categories. For example, say you make a trip to Wal-Mart and spend $40.54 purchasing an array of groceries and laundry supplies:
In these situations, Mint allows y'all to split the transaction into multiple categories. To exercise so, y'all first need to "Edit Details" from the Transactions page, so select the small-scale Y-shaped double-concluded pointer button in the upper right of the Transaction Details class pictured in the above Consumer Reports example. Upon doing and so, you' ll be presented with a dialog box where you tin split the original transaction to represent the proper amounts and categories:
Once yous're done, you'll be redirected to the Transactions grid view. After locating your original transaction, yous should run into information technology now split into your designated categories and amounts, with a "Y"-shaped symbol next to each to indicate they are separate transactions. This is what our original $40.54 transaction looks like in the overview in one case we're finished:
How To Handle Sales Tax
When splitting one transaction into several based on a given receipt, you lot may be left with a remainder above and across the total of the item prices in each category due to sales tax. I recommend including the portion of sales tax incurred with the total of each category.
Alternatively, you could create a third category in the in a higher place scenario and assign it to "Sales Tax", but this creates inconsistency with single, not-separate transactions in which the entire purchase total is assigned to a given category with no portion assigned to sales revenue enhancement.
Using Transaction Notes
Every bit illustrated in the Consumer Reports subscription case to a higher place, notes upwards to ii,000 characters can be entered on any given transaction. This is purely optional, but can be very helpful for documenting warranty duration for larger or more expensive purchases. If you desire the ability to differentiate purchases for items within the same category, you can use notes to signal what was purchased and when.
These notes are visible within the Transaction Details screen and also in the right sidebar of the Transactions overview when a given transaction is selected. These notes are also visible from other menus elsewhere in Mint, such as Trends and Budgets.
Marking Transactions As Duplicates
Mint may occasionally download the same transaction from your account more than in one case. This creates duplicates which can overstate your income and/or spending.
If y'all place a duplicate transaction, you lot can mark it as such using the checkbox in the lower left corner of the Transaction Details screen, every bit illustrated in the above Consumer Reports case. One time marked equally a duplicate, a transaction is greyed out and excluded from all reporting.
In my experience, indistinguishable transactions are typically caused when a user edits a Mint transaction that is still in the "awaiting" status, indicated with italics. Avoid making any edits to transactions which are in this state and duplicates should seldom exist an issue.
Filtering & Searching Mint Transactions
You lot can filter, sort, and search Mint transactions in several different ways. You'll notice a list of account types in the upper left of the Transactions folio, with individual accounts listed in the sidebar below. You can use these to select either an account type or a specific account to view only the transactions associated with your choice.
Additionally, y'all can toggle the Engagement, Description, Category, and Amount columns can to filter the displayed transactions in either ascending or descending order according to your option.
Creating & Using Transaction Tags
You can use tags to group Mint transactions from different categories for sorting and tracking purposes. Mint starts you out with some bones tags similar "Reimbursable", but you tin can create additional tags via the button in Transaction Details or via the section in the left sidebar of the Mint Transactions page.
For example, y'all could create and use tags to differentiate betwixt you and your spouse's spending. I've personally found tags helpful for tracking HSA-eligible medical expenses, rebate-eligible purchases, and all expenses related to specific vacations or trips.
Y'all can add a tag to a transaction by checking the box for the desired tag or tags in the Transaction Details screen. Reference the blurred portion of the above Consumer Reports transaction.
To filter all transactions by a given tag, only select it from the list displayed in the left sidebar of the Transactions page, located under the Accounts section.
Searching Transactions
The top of the Mint Transactions page contains a search bar which you lot can use to search any transaction attribute – date, description, category, transaction corporeality, fifty-fifty tags. But blazon what yous're searching for into the search bar and it volition employ auto-complete to provide you with a list of bachelor options:
Notation that Mint distinguishes between categories and sub-categories in search past using =: and :, respectively. In the higher up instance, the first option will render all transactions which are assigned specifically to the "Shopping" category. The second option volition render results of all transactions which belong to either the parent "Shopping" category OR any sub-categories inside it.
The search role is quite helpful for locating specific transactions or groups of transactions.
Boosted Features
The master Mint Transactions page has several boosted features, described in detail beneath.
Editing Multiple Transactions At In one case
Yous can edit multiple transactions at in one case by simply selecting them via the checkbox adjacent to each, clicking the "Edit Multiple" push button at the peak of the page, and assigning the required attribute via the Transaction Details screen. I've found this most helpful for marker multiple transactions as duplicates.
Calculation A Transaction Manually
You lot can add transactions manually if needed. For example, if you hoard your savings stash nether your mattress and dip into it to make a purchase, Mint will be none the wiser due to a lack of whatever transaction in your depository financial institution or credit card business relationship. You lot can apply the "+ Transaction" button at the summit of the folio to add together such transactions manually.
Changing The Number Of Transactions Displayed Per Page
Mint paginates transaction results, which you can navigate by selecting page numbers in the lower right hand corner of the screen. You can control the number of results Mint displays on a given page here equally well. For shorter load times, select a smaller number; for longer load times simply less toggling between pages, increase this value. I personally use the maximum brandish of 100 transactions per page.
Exporting Transactions To Excel
Mint possesses an underappreciated feature which enables yous to export transactions to Excel. This gives y'all the flexibility to further manipulate information should you feel so inclined, or but back up your fiscal history complete with the notes you've entered in Mint. I perform a mass export of all transactions every vi-12 months to be certain I don't lose my financial history.
Summary
Kudos, y'all're a Mint transactions pro! You now know how to ensure that your financial transactions are properly reported, categorized, and tracked past Mint. This is essential for leveraging the power of Mint's Budgets and Trends functionality, which we'll be taking a look at soon. Every bit the old aphorism goes, "garbage in, garbage out"!
Taking the time to familiarize yourself with Mint Transactions is crucial to laying a solid foundation for your coin management system. While the initial configuration may accept a bit of initial setup in the course of creating sub-categories, rules, and tags, once you lot get rolling Mint does a pretty good job of staying on cruise control.
All you need to practise is a bit of piece of work up front. So stretch that string, suspension out that level, and practice the prep piece of work at present to ensure that your financial foundation will be congenital correctly, one transaction – and brick – at a time.
Next Steps
For those of yous who accept been following the Master Your Money series from the get-go, below are the next steps on your journey to financial liberty:
- Review all existing transaction categories and add together sub-categories for any expense types you know you're interested in tracking separately via either Mint Budgets or Trends.
- Review all existing transaction tags and add additional tags for any transactions beyond multiple categories which y'all know you're interested in grouping.
- Create transaction rules for one-off service providers and billers to ensure these expenses are properly categorized automatically in future.
- Review all "Cash & Credit" account type transactions from the concluding 30 days (minimum) or 90 days (ideally) and assign to the proper categories to enable Mint to create more accurate initial Budgets and Trends reporting.
- Form a habit of and system for monitoring new transactions in Mint on a weekly basis to make any required adjustments to the way Mint is categorizing your income and spending.
How To Filter Transactions In Mint,
Source: https://www.thefinancialfreedomproject.com/laying-your-financial-foundation-a-guide-to-mint-transactions/
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