A personal balance sheet is one of the most powerful tools for managing your financial life. It provides a clear snapshot of what you own (your assets) and what you owe (your liabilities). With Olomon’s balance sheet module, you can simplify financial organization, uncover opportunities to improve your financial position, and prepare for life’s planned—or unexpected—moments.
This guide walks you through why creating a personal balance sheet is essential, how to set one up, and how to use the tools we’ve built to make the process seamless, secure, and insightful.
Why Create and Maintain a Personal Balance Sheet?
Your financial well-being depends on your ability to understand and manage your resources effectively. A personal balance sheet provides clarity in the following ways:
See the Big Picture: By consolidating all assets and liabilities, you get a real-time understanding of your net worth.
Make informed decisions: Make a more confident choice when considering things such as “how should I pay for a large purchase?” or “should I sell this asset” because you have all of the relevant information at your disposal.
Prepare for the Unexpected: Having an updated balance sheet makes it easier to respond to life’s changes.
Facilitate Collaboration: Use your balance sheet to collaborate effectively with advisors, family members, or partners by sharing a transparent, up-to-date view of your finances.
How to Set Up Your Balance Sheet for the First Time
Setting up your personal balance sheet on our platform is simple and intuitive. Here’s a step-by-step guide to get you started.
There are 2 distinct approaches
Approach 1
Quickly do a braindump of all of your assets and debts, then fill in the details in a second pass.
Pro: This approach allows you to get a feel for Olomon’s balance sheet without going through the (minimal) effort of connecting your financial institutions. It also allows you to quickly get a feel for the landscape of your balance sheet. Think of this as creating the skeleton of your balance sheet first.
Con: If you decide to later connect your financial institutions, (which we highly recommend) then this approach will take you more time in the long run. You may have some merging or “de-duplicating” work to do if you take this approach.
Approach 2 (recommended)
First, securely connect each of your available financial institutions, and then manually add any assets and debts for which there is not an integration.
Pro: If you have more than one account at any of your financial institutions, then this approach is quicker in the long run. Think of this as creating your balance sheet with a firm foundation, brick by brick.
Con: You have to have all of your logins handy in order to get started with this approach. And it may feel like it’s taking longer - until it all comes together at once.
We’re going to explain Approach 2. Feel free to take Approach 1 if you’d rather, extrapolating as necessary.
Step 1: Link your Third-Party Institutions
Our platform integrates seamlessly with financial data aggregators like Plaid to make adding assets and debts faster, more accurate, and automatically updated.
Why Link Accounts?
Automation: No need to manually enter balances or update them frequently.
Accuracy: Direct connections reduce the risk of errors in your balance sheet.
Convenience: Get a real-time view of your net worth with minimal effort.
How to Link Accounts
Click on the plus button in the body of the Balance Sheet.
Select "Link an Account"
If this is your first connection, the only option is: “+ Via a new institution”.
Otherwise, you can choose to add more accounts at an Institution that you linked previously.
Note: we recommend that you connect all of your accounts at each institution. This will give you the best experience. So, if you connect all accounts each time, then you won’t find a need for this option.
You will be presented with Plaid’s connection process.
Here, you may have the option to either login to your Plaid account or, select your financial institution from the list or use the search bar.
Log in securely using your institution’s credentials. (Note: We use bank-grade encryption to keep your data safe.)
Confirm the accounts and balances you’d like to sync. The linked data will populate your balance sheet automatically.
Repeat this process for each financial institution that is supported by Plaid. You’ll find thousands of institutions including investment accounts, mortgages, banks and credit unions.
Pro Tip: If your institution doesn’t support direct connections, you can still add accounts manually. Ensure to update balances periodically for accuracy.
Step 2: Manually Add Assets and Debts
We plan on adding more integrations with third parties so that your assets and debts can be updated automatically. In the meantime, some assets and debts will need to be manually added and updated. Such as: real estate, vehicles, crypto, private investments, and other valuables such as artwork and jewelry.
There are a few different ways to manually add assets and debts to your Balance Sheet.
Use the “Add” button at the top of the balance sheet to manually add assets and debts
There is an option to “Save an add another” using this form so that you can braindump all of your assets and debts into your Balance Sheet at once.
Alternatively, you can add assets and debts inline in the Balance Sheet - much in the same way you would use a spreadsheet.
Start this process by clicking on the plus button.
Optionally, you can selecting an option from the plus button’s dropdown menu. This will take you to the full page Add form - similar to the big “Add” button at the top of the Balance Sheet.
Olomon allows you to classify your assets into categories:
Real Estate
Stocks
Vehicles
Crypto
Investments
Valuables
Or, you can leave the asset type blank.
Step 3: Organize
With Olomon, you can organize your Assets and Debts into Groups and Sections. You have the freedom to model your Balance Sheet in whatever way makes the most sense to you and your financial picture.
Here are a few different ways you can organize your Balance Sheet:
Method 1: Organize by Asset Class / Liquidity Type
If your assets are primarily personally owned, you may prefer organizing them by Asset Class
For Example:
Group 1: Cash Accounts
Checking A
Savings B
Checking C
Credit Card D
Credit Card E
Venmo Account F
Group 2: Equities
ETF Account G
Common Stock
Preferred Stock
Group 3: Real Estate
Primary Residence
Primary Residence Mortgage
HELOC
Vacation Home
Vacation Home Mortgage
Group 4: Managed Funds
Retirement Account G
Brokerage Account H
Method 2: Organize by Ownership
With this methodology, first your items are organized into Sections by ownership type (Personal vs Joint vs Business etc). You can further organize into Groups based upon Asset Class, Liquidity Type, or Group each Debt by the Asset that secures it.
For Example:
Section 1: Personal
Group 1: Cash Accounts
Checking A
Savings B
Checking C
Credit Card D
Credit Card E
Venmo Account F
Group 2: Investments
Retirement Account G
Brokerage Account H
Section 2: Business
Group 1: Cash Accounts
Business Checking J
Business Credit Card K
Maintaining your Balance Sheet
Value Age Indicators
An item’s value is only useful if you know the age of the value. In the best case scenario, your balance sheet contains the most up-to-date values. For cash accounts and public assets, today’s value is ideal. For private investments or slower-moving assets like real estate, a monthly, quarterly, or even annual value may suffice. With a quick glance at your Olomon Balance Sheet, you can visually identify any assets or debts whose value may be out-of-date.
Each item in the Balance Sheet has a “value age indicator”. See the below table to understand the meaning of the value age indicator.
| For Plaid Connected Items | For Manually Entered Items |
Green | Plaid Item Connection Status is
- Connected or
- Pending expiration
| Rule: Value Last Updated less than 90 days* |
Yellow | Plaid Connection Status: Error | Rule: Value Last Updated 90 days or more* |
Red | Plaid Item Connection Status Name=
- Reauthorization required or
- Access revoked (aka Unlinked)
| n/a |
If any of your value age indicators are yellow or red, then we recommend you address them by either reconnecting or reauthorizing plaid, or manually updating the value of the asset or debt.
Editing Assets / Debts
Manually entered assets and debts can be edited with basic details relative to the asset type. You can also add notes to each item.
As of now, you can rename a connected asset or debt, but can not yet add notes or any other fields. That functionality is coming soon.
In order to edit a manually created asset, select “Edit” from the settings cog on the right side of the balance sheet.
Manually created assets and debts can be deleted in a similar manner. However, linked assets and debts must first be unlinked and archived.
Common Questions about setting up a Balance Sheet
What happens if my account balances change? Linked accounts update automatically. For manual entries, update them when the value age indicator turns yellow (or before).
Can I track non-monetary assets like collectibles? Yes! You can add and categorize non-monetary assets manually.
What if I don’t want to link my accounts? You can still build a robust balance sheet by manually adding all relevant information. Our interface is designed for both linked and manual workflows. The downside of this approach is that it involves more manual work to keep your Balance Sheet up to date.
How secure is my financial data? Security is our top priority. All data is encrypted, and you have full control over what is shared or linked.
Start Building Your Balance Sheet Today
Creating a personal balance sheet is a vital step toward achieving financial clarity and control. By consolidating your assets and liabilities, categorizing, and linking accounts for real-time updates, you can make informed decisions and plan confidently for the future.
Ready to take control of your finances? Log in to your account and start building your balance sheet today! If you need further assistance, our support team is here to help.