Microsoft Excel destination
Send your categorised transactions to an Excel workbook
Fin creates a real .xlsx workbook in your OneDrive and keeps it filled with your sorted transactions — category, tax treatment, merchant, amount and receipt reference. Daily on its own, or the moment you ask.
Microsoft Excel
What does the Excel destination do?
It writes your categorised transactions into an Excel workbook stored in your own OneDrive, nine columns per transaction, appended beneath what is already there.
The file is an ordinary .xlsx. You can open it in Excel on the desktop, in Excel for the web, on a phone, or in any other spreadsheet program that reads Excel files — and it stays in your OneDrive whatever you decide about AI2Fin later.
Rows arrive already enriched. Instead of a date, a description and an amount, each row carries the category Fin assigned, whether it is tax deductible, the deduction bucket it belongs in, and a link to the receipt.
How do you connect Excel to AI2Fin?
You sign in with your Microsoft account on Microsoft’s own screen. Fin asks for access to one folder of its own inside your OneDrive — not your whole drive, and not your other files.
That folder is created and named by OneDrive for this app the first time you connect. Everything the Excel destination ever writes lives inside it, so the boundary is a place you can see in your own file browser rather than a promise in a policy.
Because the grant is that narrow, no file picker is needed and nothing about the connection happens in your browser — the access token stays server-side. You can withdraw the permission from your Microsoft account settings at any time.
What you are agreeing to on Microsoft Excel’s screen
Read and write inside this app’s own OneDrive folder
Microsoft calls this Files.ReadWrite.AppFolder. It grants a single folder that OneDrive creates for AI2Fin, and nothing outside it — the rest of your OneDrive is not readable under this connection.
Keep the connection alive
Offline access, so a scheduled push keeps working without you signing in again each morning. Microsoft issues a fresh credential on every renewal and the previous one stops working.
Your name and email address
Used only to label the connection on the settings screen, so two Microsoft accounts are told apart.
Does Fin create the workbook, or can you choose your own?
Fin creates it. Every Excel destination is a workbook Fin makes inside its own OneDrive folder — you name it, and you can push to any workbook it has created there before.
When you choose “create new”, a blank, valid .xlsx is uploaded to that folder with the name you typed, and the nine column headers are written into its first sheet. If a workbook of that name already exists, OneDrive names the new one slightly differently rather than replacing it, so an accidental second press costs you a spare file instead of a month of rows.
Every push after that appends beneath the last used row of the sheet you chose, and the header row is written only when the first row is genuinely empty. Your own added columns, formatting and formulas are left where they are.
You cannot point this at an existing workbook elsewhere in your OneDrive
This is the real trade, and it is worth stating plainly. Microsoft’s alternative permission — the one that reaches a workbook you already keep in, say, your Documents folder — only grants access through Microsoft’s own file picker running in your browser. The app-folder grant works entirely server-side, asks for a single folder instead of your drive, and keeps the access token out of the browser altogether. Fin takes that one. If you want your existing workbook to see this data, the practical route is to link or import from the workbook Fin maintains.
What lands in the workbook, and in what shape?
Nine columns, A to I, one row per transaction, oldest first, appended below the last row already in the sheet. The amount is written as a real number, so a SUM over the column works straight away.
Writes go through an Excel workbook session with changes persisted, which is what lets a large first push land as one coherent block rather than a few thousand separate edits — and it is the difference between a big backfill completing and it being throttled part-way.
Where the rows go is read from the sheet rather than assumed. If that read cannot be completed, the push stops and writes nothing rather than guessing an offset and overwriting rows that are already there.
| Field | Type | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A · Date | YYYY-MM-DD | ISO form, so the column sorts correctly however Excel stores it. |
| B · Description | Text | The transaction line as it was recorded. |
| C · Merchant | Text | Who was paid, once Fin has resolved it. |
| D · Amount | Number | A real number — SUM, AutoSum and charts work with no cleanup. |
| E · Currency | Text | So a multi-currency year stays readable. |
| F · Category | Text | The category Fin assigned, or the one you set. |
| G · Tax deductible | Yes / No / blank | Blank where nobody has assessed it yet. |
| H · Tax category | Text | The deduction bucket it belongs in. |
| I · Receipt | Text (URL) | The address of the receipt attached to that transaction. |
Any number formatting, column width or date formatting you apply yourself is a one-off change Fin will not undo — new rows arrive underneath and inherit whatever you set up.
Which of your transactions get sent to Microsoft Excel?
The ones you entered yourself, imported from a CSV, or captured from a receipt — categorised, tax-tagged and receipt-linked before they land. Transactions that arrived through a connected bank feed stay inside AI2Fin, where your reports and your tax view still count them.
It works the same way for every destination, so the file you keep in Microsoft Excel carries the records you assembled. The reasoning behind that, and what it means for a file you share with your accountant, is on the Destinations overview.
Would another destination suit you better?
The same nine fields go to all four, so the choice is about where you already work rather than about what you would be giving up.
Transactions to Google Sheets
Connect your own Google account, let Fin create a fresh spreadsheet or reuse one you have already opened with AI2Fin, and your categorised transactions land there as rows — kept updated on a schedule, or pushed the moment you ask.
Transactions to Notion
Share a Notion page with the AI2Fin integration, and Fin creates a database inside it and keeps it filled with your categorised transactions.
Transactions to Airtable
Yes. Authorise AI2Fin from Airtable’s own screen, choose where the table should live, and your categorised transactions arrive as records.
The Destinations overview compares all four side by side and covers what every push has in common. Outbound Destinations is included on the ELITE+ and AUTO+ plans — see what each plan covers.
Microsoft Excel, answered
Common questions about the Microsoft Excel destination
- Where in your OneDrive does the Excel workbook actually get saved?
- In a folder OneDrive creates and names for AI2Fin the first time you connect, which sits alongside your other OneDrive folders and is visible in your own file browser. Every workbook this destination creates lives there. Because the permission covers only that folder, nothing else in your OneDrive is readable through this connection — which is the point of setting it up that way.
- Can Fin write into an Excel workbook you already keep in OneDrive?
- Not today, and it is better to say so than to imply otherwise. Reaching a workbook stored elsewhere in your OneDrive requires Microsoft’s file-picker permission, which grants access only to files you select through Microsoft’s own picker in the browser. The folder-scoped permission Fin uses instead runs entirely server-side and asks for one folder rather than your drive. If you want an existing workbook to carry this data, link or import from the workbook Fin maintains — Excel handles that natively.
- Is it a real Excel file you can open on the desktop, or an online-only sheet?
- A real .xlsx file. Fin uploads a valid, blank workbook and writes into it, so it opens in Excel on Windows or Mac, in Excel for the web, on mobile, and in other spreadsheet programs that read Excel files. You can download it, email it, or keep it in OneDrive — it behaves like any other workbook you made yourself.
- Does the Amount column arrive as a number you can total?
- Yes. Amounts are written as numeric values rather than as text, so SUM, AutoSum, subtotals, pivot tables and charts all work on column D without any find-and-replace first. That is deliberate: a column of numbers stored as text is the single most common reason an exported spreadsheet needs an evening of cleanup before it is useful.
Your numbers, in a workbook you own
Sorting and categorising your transactions is the free part. Turn on the Excel destination when you want the finished rows arriving in your OneDrive workbook without you lifting a finger.
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