🛠️ Bank export tidy-up script

💡 Use Case

• Turns the bank's monthly export into the columns the Monthly budget sheet wants: date, label, amount, category, account.
• Written on 30 December, the day after the vault was set up, as the last thing I allowed myself to build before the rule against building.
• It saves about six of the ten minutes of 🔹 Sunday money check. The remaining four are the ones that need a person.

How I use it

1. Sunday: download the week from both accounts.
2. Run the script on each file.
3. Paste the result under the month's tab.
4. Read the unrecognised list at the end and categorise those by hand. Usually three or four lines.
5. Add any new label to the mapping table, so it is recognised next time.

in:   booking date ; value date ; text ; amount ; currency
out:  date | label | amount | category | account

⚖️ Pros & Cons

Pros

• The export arrives with the amount as text and the date the wrong way round. Both are fixed before I see them.
• A small table of my own maps what the bank writes to one of my seventeen categories. Fennick Bakehouse is Groceries. I have decided.
• Anything it does not recognise is left blank and listed at the end, so nothing is categorised by guess.

Cons

• The bank has changed its column order once, in July, without telling anyone. The script failed loudly, which is the best way to fail.
• Cash does not exist as far as it knows.
• Six minutes a week is five hours a year. It took three evenings to write. This is only just worth it and I enjoyed it too much to care.

🔄 Alternatives

• Typing the week in by hand, as before. Ten minutes and a small resentment.
• Letting an app read the account. See the budget sheet's note for how that went.