More Q and A

More Questions and Answers about how to use Mojito

Feel free to post a comment below and ask any question you have about how to use Mojito. I will try to answer it.

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Q: On the Budget tab, what is the Budget Amount column for, in addition to the Expected Amount column? It doesn't seem like I need to use it... is that correct?

A: The "Budget Amount" column is where you specify the budget you are aiming for. The "Expected Amount" column is automatically calculated based on your start/end dates.

So if you have a Budget Amount for Food set at $100 per month, and you select "Last 3 months" as the date range, then the Expected Amount will be calculated to be $300.

FYI, don't edit cells with a light gray background. These cells are calculated based on formulas or scripts behind the scenes. (Note: You can edit the Budget Amount of the "Everything else" row.)

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Q:  I would like to separate out business travel expenses from the rest of our travel expenses. I have a "business" tag. I want one budget item (row on the Budget sheet) to be business ( travel + hotel + airlines + taxi,parking+ restaurants). Is there a way to use parentheses or do I have to make a business and a non business tags to separate the two groups?

A: Mojito can do exactly what you want. Just tag your business expenses with the "Business" tag, as you are already doing, then on the Budget sheet, add a Budget item row for "Business Expenses", set the desired Monthly Budget amount, and enter your "Business" tag in the Include Category + Tags column. Now, the trick to preventing those business expenses from showing up in the other budget items is to exclude the "Business" tag from your budgets (under the Budget Options section). I know this sounds counter intuitive. How can we exclude the Business tag and still have a budget item track business expenses!? Here's why it works: the Category + Tags column overrides the excluded categories / tags list. So, when you explicitly list an excluded category or tag for one of your budget items, the budget item will "win". Since your other budget items do not explicitly list the excluded "Business" tag, none of your transactions tags with "Business" will be included in those calculations. I hope that made sense. If not, here is a picture to help you set it up.

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Q: I got the error message {your error message here} when I was importing my transactions from Mint. Do you know what the problem is?

A: No idea. It could be something in your transaction data that is causing a problem for Mojito. To help us troubleshoot the problem, turn on debug logging.

1. In the menu, select Tools > Script editor.
2. Open the SheetTriggers.gs file (it may be opened for you automatically).
3. Near the top of that file, find this line:
        Debug.enabled = false;
4. Change the value to true:
        Debug.enabled = true;
5. Save and close the script window and close Mojito, then re-open Mojito and try to import again.
6. Assuming the error happens again, open the log window via the menu:
   Mojito > Display log window
7. If you don't like debugging code :-) just paste the debug log output into an email and send it to me. b3devs@gmail.com
8. If you DO like debugging code, feel free to look through the debug log. Your error should appear at the end. Hopefully, the debug log will tell us exactly where (line number and script file) where the error occurred. Also, the log entries that precede the error may give us a clue what is happening.
9. Don't forget to turn debug logging off when you are done:
        Debug.enabled = false;
   The debug log has a max size, and if you use Mojito for several minutes with debug logging enabled, you will exceed that max size and start getting errors.

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Q: I was looking through the Mojito code and noticed that all of the heavy lifting seems to be done by another "library" called MojitoLib. What is the MojitoLib library?

A: I moved a lot of the code into the MojitoLib library so that I could make bug fixes without everyone having to download a new copy of the Mojito spreadsheet or manually fix the code themselves (which they had to do back in October 2013...). Now that Mojito uses the library, users can get the latest bug fixes by opening the spreadsheet script, selecting the Resources > Libraries menu item, then selecting the latest version of MojitoLib from the drop down list.

Q: Couldn't you or some other random person who gets your credentials change MojitoLib and then send our data elsewhere, potentially?

A: Not exactly. The spreadsheet is locked (linked) to a specific version of the MojitoLib library. When a "version" of the library is created, it can't be changed, so I (or anyone else) can't silently change the MojitoLib code that your Mojito spreadsheet is using. You would have to manually change which version of MojitoLib your spreadsheet is using, or download a new copy of the Mojito spreadsheet that is pointing to a different version.

Q: How can I access the source code of that library?

A: You can view the actual MojitoLib script project here. Also, the code for MojitoLib is open source and is available on GitHub.

Q: Can I build and use my own copy of MojitoLib instead of using the shared one?

A:  Download the MojitoLib code from GitHub and follow the steps in the README to build and upload your own copy of MojitoLib to your personal google account. (Hopefully the steps in the README still work?? I'm sure there are newer / better tools to simplify this now ...).