Confused with budgeting and cashflow??!!!
kizzyfur22
Posts: 13 Forumite
Hi all,
I'm getting myself all confused and stressed trying to create a budget/cashflow spreadsheet and desperately need some advice and help please!
I have 2 bank accounts, 2 credit card accounts and use cash. I tend to use 1 bank account purely for bills and the majority of my spending is on the 2 credit cards to get the cashback on them.
I used to have a simple spreadsheet set up that for each month would show budgeted income and expenses listed in different categories and then the actual next to it, similar to below.
June Budget June Actual
Opening Balance
Income
Wages
Cashback
Etc
Total Income
Expenditure
Bills
Food
Car
Etc
Total Expenditure
Income less Expenditure
Closing Balance
However, because I have multiple accounts I can never balance it as against the actual values in my banks & on my credit cards at the end of each month. Plus my statements are on 24th of each month which isn't a true full month. I have also had a lot of big expenditure recently which I will have to pay off over a few months so this is distorting my cash flow!!
I use an old version of MS Money to record my transactions but find I need a spreadsheet to help me plan and analyse.
I was considering setting up a separate spreadsheet for each account and then a summary so that I can see the totals for each category. I think I'm overcomplicating it though but I just can't seem to get my head around how it should work and how I should set it up.
It's driving me insane now. Please help!
Thank You
I'm getting myself all confused and stressed trying to create a budget/cashflow spreadsheet and desperately need some advice and help please!
I have 2 bank accounts, 2 credit card accounts and use cash. I tend to use 1 bank account purely for bills and the majority of my spending is on the 2 credit cards to get the cashback on them.
I used to have a simple spreadsheet set up that for each month would show budgeted income and expenses listed in different categories and then the actual next to it, similar to below.
June Budget June Actual
Opening Balance
Income
Wages
Cashback
Etc
Total Income
Expenditure
Bills
Food
Car
Etc
Total Expenditure
Income less Expenditure
Closing Balance
However, because I have multiple accounts I can never balance it as against the actual values in my banks & on my credit cards at the end of each month. Plus my statements are on 24th of each month which isn't a true full month. I have also had a lot of big expenditure recently which I will have to pay off over a few months so this is distorting my cash flow!!
I use an old version of MS Money to record my transactions but find I need a spreadsheet to help me plan and analyse.
I was considering setting up a separate spreadsheet for each account and then a summary so that I can see the totals for each category. I think I'm overcomplicating it though but I just can't seem to get my head around how it should work and how I should set it up.
It's driving me insane now. Please help!
Thank You
0
Comments
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You should find it easier to get your head round how MS Money works rather than try to replicate it in spreadsheet.
Use the reconcile function on each account when you get your statement. It doesn't matter that it is not a month, it is just all the transactions up to that statement date. Add in any transactions you have forgotten to record to get it to reconcile.
Reconciliation is not really connected with Income/Expense reporting it is just to make sure you haven't missed anything.
Then you can just call up the Income/Expense report for whatever period.0 -
MSmoney has all the planing functionality built in as part of the budgeting and forecasting.
set up your budget in MSMoney first then track your accounts/categories.
get the last free version and port your data into that.
once you have the plan the erst is just tracking spending against catagories.
MSM handles all the account tracking to categories with transactions(split if needed)
use recurring transactions for the main bills and most of the tracking become automated.0 -
getmore4less wrote: »MSmoney has all the planing functionality built in as part of the budgeting and forecasting.
set up your budget in MSMoney first then track your accounts/categories.
get the last free version and port your data into that.
Having never used it - is this the one you mean:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-GB/download/details.aspx?id=20738
Sunset makes it sound like a retirement home, and it only *says* it supports windows 7 but chances are it will work with 10.0 -
Having never used it - is this the one you mean:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-GB/download/details.aspx?id=20738
Sunset makes it sound like a retirement home, and it only *says* it supports windows 7 but chances are it will work with 10.
THe last UK version was Money2005-UK-QFE2.exe
This page seems to have a reasonable summary and links to downloads
https://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/479281b2-90f9-42ca-85f7-644fc6e1e5c3/download-microsoft-money-installation-files-solve-activation-and-some-other-errors?forum=money0 -
Thank you for your advice. I am using the 2004 disc version of MS money uk which I used to use a long time ago. I've got to grips with the basics of entering and reconciling transactions and setting up catgeories but think I need to understand the reports and forecasting more so that they give me the information that I need.
Is it worth updating to the free version or is there not much difference?
Is this still a good piece of software to use or would you recommend a more up to date alternative, maybe a cloud based one so I can enter expenditure as and when I make purchases?0 -
What a palaver. I suspect the version I linked to is purely US, but I'm not going to install it to check.0
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kizzyfur22 wrote: »Thank you for your advice. I am using the 2004 disc version of MS money uk which I used to use a long time ago. I've got to grips with the basics of entering and reconciling transactions and setting up catgeories but think I need to understand the reports and forecasting more so that they give me the information that I need.
Is it worth updating to the free version or is there not much difference?
Is this still a good piece of software to use or would you recommend a more up to date alternative, maybe a cloud based one so I can enter expenditure as and when I make purchases?
The main reason they stopped it was because it was complete, nothing new to add so people stopped upgrading.
ok things have moved on a bit with cloud and apps on phones but if you automate most transactions then updating and reconciling does not take long and you need to do that if you want to get on top and analyse your spends.
You are probably OK with the version you have,
..............................................................................
If you set up a budget you will get most of what you are looking for.
plan a full year, enter your income, regular outgoings and your budgets for categories till it ballances, all the known regular ones can be auto entry.
Then as you track and reconcile you can get your reports on how you are doing to the plan.0
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