spreadsheets to manage outgoings?

This is how I have done my excel spreadsheet for my budgeting (sorry if this is a bit basic/not basic enough ):


The first column going down on the sheet is for the date and the second is for the day of the week. (Some items come out say on the 15th each month and some come out every Monday, like weekly pocket money, so I need both)


The first row going across names the different accounts or pots: miscellaneous, food money, bill money, savings.

I have four columns going down for each account or pot, and the second row heads these as: money in, money out, balance and description.

I put a border line down every 4th column to separate the accounts.

Basically when you enter details from your receipts/bank statements/etc you put money coming in in the first column, money going out in the second column and the description in the fourth column.


This is roughly what it would look like. The letters at the top and numbers at the side are the row and column identifiers

____A_______B__________C_____D______E________F

1_____________________Miscellaneous

2__Date______day______in____out_____balance__description

3__11/04/05__MON____________________50.00____opening balance

4___________________________10.00___40.00____ATM




You can get excel to add up the balance column for you to automatically get the balance.

If you had it set up exactly the same as mine (i.e row 1 is account heading, row 2 says ‘in/out/balance/description’ column A is date, column B is day and the ‘balance’ column is column E) you would put in Column E row 3 (cell E3) the opening balance.

Then in cell E4 you would type: =E3+C4-D4

This essentially is: opening balance + money in – money out.

Then you would click on cell E4 and press the shift key and use the arrow keys to select down say 30 squares (for 1 month). Then press the control key and ‘D’ at the same time. This will copy the formula down into the selected cells. It should automatically alter the formula for you so that:
Cell E4 reads E3+C4-D4
Cell E5 reads E4+C5-D5
Cell E6 reads E5+C6-D6
Etc etc

So that it adds up the right day’s balance for you and you don’t need to work each one out yourself.

Hope that helps (or at least doesn't make it worse). If you have any questions post them and i will try and answer them.

Or get yourself a cheap copy of Microsoft Money? Very easy to use, I've seen it for a fiver in a charity shop and on Ebay. I think old versions (perfectly OK) are available on Amazon. It's so straightforward and does loads of analysis and forecasting for you. I wouldn't be without mine.

Or just get a cheap cash book