Linking Word and Excel, financial info

[FrecklePaw]

I want to automate some steps/functions as follows:

Steps:

1. Input each individual finance entry into Excel

Functions:

1. Ability to create a monthly ‘report’ so you can see the running total for the month at any point in that month (sorted/organised per client)
2. Ability to be able to input data automatically into a Word document (i.e. pull the financial data entered from Excel into the Word doc, again organised per client).

How can I achieve this using Excel and Word together? Is it possible to do something like this?

[HansV]

I'd create a tabular format:
Field names/column headings in the first row, one column for each data item (date, client, product, quantity, amount, ...)
Each row below is an individual entry.

This will allow you to create a pivot table based on the data. A pivot table lets you slice and dice the data in different ways.
And you can use the data as source for a mail merge in Word.

[FrecklePaw]

Thanks Hans - in terms of using the data for a mail merge in Word how would I do this to create an invoice document, i.e. so the data can automatically populate a document invoice that reflects the monthly individual items plus total for each client?

[HansV]

If you want to combine multiple rows in one mailmerge document, it requires rather complicated field codes; Graham Mayor's free add-in Mail Merge 'Many-to-One' does the hard work for you.
But it might be easier just to copy/paste a table from Excel into a Word document.

The details depend on what exactly you want to do of course. You might also look into third-party accounting software; I have no experience with those, so I can't recommend a particular application.