This post aims to show you what’s possible with statements downloaded from Wesabe, and explain in more detail why direct OFX downloads from Nationwide were so useful.
People use Microsoft Money, Wesabe or similar money management software for a simple reason: to make better sense of their money in an increasingly confusing financial world.
The internet statements most banks provide are very basic. This is either because banks don’t think people want / need anything else or (the more cynical suspicion) they prefer to make it difficult to track bad spending habits.
Software like Money and Wesabe exist to fill this gap. One of the main benefits are ‘tags’ or categories to group money into sensible ways and improve budgeting. Once data is tagged in Wesabe, graphs show these transactions grouped together over time and you can check how your budget is going. This is perfect for an Envelope budget approach, without actually using cash and real envelopes.
Wesabe’s ‘tag’ graphs are a massive improvement over my bank’s own website (a single view across my cards and accounts) but one thing I wanted was a monthly breakdown on a single page. To Wesabe’s credit they let you download your data (and promise to do this forever). Thanks to this commitment, it’s possible to create your own.
Here’s how I used Wesabe’s data to create the missing report:
1. You start with the very basic information contained in a CSV from Nationwide internet banking (excluding the balance, which I’ve removed for privacy).
| Date | Description | Amount |
| 2010-01-15 | Pret a Manger | £-3.94 |
2. Next, convert the CSV to OFX then upload to Wesabe along with your other accounts.
3. Tag your transactions to add some meaning. Once you’re done, below is an example of the information you can download from Wesabe in a CSV file (XML is even more detailed but let’s keep it simple):
| Account ID | Name of account | Institution | Account type | Currency | Date | Amount | User description | Original description | Note (if required) | Tags |
| 1 | Current account | Nationwide (UK) | Checking | GBP | 2010-01-15 | -3.94 | Pret a Manger | Pret A Manger | food |
4. Finally, I used software to analyse the data and make a webpage with the new report on.
Here’s the end result:
Example of a report based on Wesabe data
This report uses dummy transactions and dates inspired by real trends so don’t get hung up on the numbers. Hopefully it shows there’s a much more useful way of looking at your monthly spending.
Creating the report took a few hours but in the long run it saves lots of time. With a few routine clicks of my mouse I’ve got an actionable understanding of my finances. I can see where I’ve overspent, and understand how much is left over for savings.
Open services that share data through APIs are growing in popularity. Services like the UK’s data.gov.uk and US’s data.gov open data projects and social network favourite Twitter provide APIs to let people access their data and do interesting, useful things with it.
UK banks aren’t keeping up with this trend, and in some cases like Nationwide they’re actually moving backwards.
Ironically, Nationwide removed the service at the most difficult financial time the world has seen for decades and made it harder for their customers to manage during this tough time.
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