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Category: Tips & Tricks

How to handle duplicate transactions

I have had this question asks now a few times so I guess it is a more common problem then I thought.

There are a number of scenarios why you would have duplicate transactions. Mint knows this and thus they created a way to mark duplicate transactions so they don’t show up on their site. But unfortunately, duplicate transactions still get exported to CSV. And when they are exported to CSV, Mint does not mark them as duplicates. Because of this, there is no way for MintToReport to distinguish them as duplicates. Follow these steps to hide duplicate transactions from MintToReport.

  1. Create a new Category on Mint’s site called ‘Duplicate’.
  2. Change the Category on all of your duplicate transactions to the new ‘Duplicate’ category.
  3. Export as usual.
  4. When importing into MintToReport, MintToReport will ask you what Parent Category you would like the ‘Duplicate’ category to be placed. When asked, choose ‘Other Categories’.

Normally, when running reports in MintToReport, you only choose Income and Expense categories, all the transactions in your new Duplicate Category will not be displayed. This will keep them hidden and keep your reports accurate.

The other option is to use TAGS. But this could cause problems remembering to always exclude the special tag. Thus, my suggestion for using a ‘Duplicate’ category makes sense. If you know of another way, please leave a comment below.

4.0 Bugs

As some of you know, I had shoulder surgery last month. As those that know, it is a very painful recovery. I was in the middle of testing version 4.0 when I tripped at home injuring myself. 4.0 was an important release since it was my first MacOS 64-bit release and Mac users who had upgraded to the Catalina release, including myself, could no longer run MintToReport.

I knew there might be bugs in the part of the balances of the new release since I didn’t have a chance to test it. But since my Mac users could not run the last version, I had to make an early release without knowing (due to pain killers) where I left off in the 4.0 release.

Please bear with me as I try to get back to work on the Balance portion of the software. I know that the balance calculation is not working properly, thus I labeled it as a beta. I will resume work as soon as I can.

Account Balances and Pending Transactions

Each Financial Institution handles how they display or give their account balances to Mint differently when it comes to pending transactions. Some will include all transactions, pending or not, it the Account Balance that is displayed on the Overview page on Mint’s site. Some will not add the pending transactions to the balance.

MintToReport keeps its own balance after you enter the original balance. It does not get any balance information from the site but rather recalculates it each time you do a fresh import. Because of that, if you have a Financial Institution that doesn’t include pending transactions in their balance, run the Account Ledger Report and you should be able to match Mint’s balance with the running balance prior to the pending transactions.

So, if you enter your account balances and let MintToReport do the math, you will always know all your transactions are correct. Otherwise, you really would have to go through your whole statement, transaction by transaction, just like your parents.

Managing Your Rental Properties with MintToReport

When I was managing 80 rentals for my Dad’s Property Managment business, we bought a $2000 program specialized in property management. Since the State of California has strict laws for handling money for property owners, it made sense. But when you are managing a few of your own, it is overkill. The biggest mistake property owners make when it comes to renting their properties is proper reporting.

That is one of the main reasons I created MintToReport was to help me keep a handle on my rentals. Here is how I do it. Hopefully those that have rentals might find this setup more convienent then the way they are doing it now.

  1. I create a TAG for every rental property I own. I keep it simple and use the Address Number of the property as a TAG. For instance, 123 Main Street, I create a tag called 123. If  it is a multi unit property, I create multiple TAGS (123-A, 123-B and so on).
  2. When ever I receive a rental check and make a deposit, I tag that depost as 123 and categorize it as ‘Rental Income’. If I deposit more then one check, I use Mint’s Spit feature to split the deposit by each check. This lets me tag each property correctly.
  3. Now, instead of step #2, my bank lets me use my phone to deposit checks. So I take 1 picture of each rental check and deposit it that way individually. Then I don’t have to split the deposit. I just have to tag and categorize each one. And it also shows up on my Bank Statement as one deposit. Great if I go to court on an eviction.
  4. When I recieve a Deposit for a rental, I tag it with 123 and categorize it as Rental Deposit under the Equity Category Type. I do this because deposits are always the tenants until I use them for unpaid rent or repairs when they move out. I also don’t want deposits to show as income.
  5. When ever there is a  repair done on a property, I tag that transaction as 123 and also tag it as ‘Tenant_Responsible’ or ‘Owner_Responsible. Always use underscores or hyphens when you create tag on Mint, or they get seperated when imported into MintToReport. See this post on why you should do it that way: https://minttoreport.com/mint-com-exported-tags/.
  6. I also create a Category for ‘Unpaid Rent’ and manually add a transaction in Mint for these. I only do this when a tenant moves out. After the Tenant has received there moveout accounting, I remove the fake transaction from Mint. I guess I could create a fack cash account for these, but I don’t currently. Again, I only put it in Mint so I can show it create a move out accounting report for the tenant.

Now following these steps, I can easily, at any time, create individule profit and loss statements for each property. I can create a Tag report and select the property tags for the month or year which is nice for having one report showing all income/expenses per property on one report. In fact,

When a tenant moves out:

  • I run a Income Expense Report
  • I Check their rental tag, and Tenant_Responsible tag and check the ‘OR‘ option in the Tags section.
  • I check all income and expense categories (that will also show my fake entry for past due rent)
  • And last but not least, I check the Rental Deposit category under my Equities Category Type.

This gives me a nice accounting for both my tenant and myself that I can printout as a PDF or print to put in my rental folder in my file cabinet.

I save three reports as User reports.

  1. A monthly tag report selecting the Date Range as Month. This way, each month I can run the report and file it away. And since I used the Date Range there really is nothing to change on the report.
  2. A Profit and loss report selecting all Property Tags and saving it as also as a month report. It is easy enough to uncheck and check the tags to drill down on individual properties.
  3. A move out Accounting report. All I need to do to alter this report when a tenant moves out is set the date range to the date the tenant moved out to the date I printed the report.  That’s when all repairs are typically done and when I add a fake transaction for past due rent, if any, in Mint. Since the report is a Date Ascending report, it shows the Tenants Deposit first with repairs and past due rent afterward. It Makes an excellent report for you, the tenant and (hopefully not) the court.

I am sure there are other ways to use MintToReport to keep tract of rentals. I am leaving the comments section open for this topic if someone wants to way in.