Budget Spreadsheet - Opinions & Ideas

danothy

I've made one that tracks every transaction I make and keeps a current snapshot of all my accounts, it's not that hard to set up or maintain as it doubles as a spending diary.

I have one sheet for all spending (cash included) that has date, time, item, cost and how i paid for it, then one for income and transfers (eg withdrawing cash) showing where the money moved to / from, and one that conditionally sums all the transactions on each account and provides a latest total.

It keeps track of the cash I have in my pocket, the cash in my change jar, the outstanding balance on my CC, all my current / savings accounts and totals all the balances and liabilities to calculate my net worth (which isn't much).

Sound like what you're aiming for?

Consumerist

That sounds like the way to go, danothy.

A separate expenditure account will help keep bank-account records uncluttered.

pickleiamin

Sounds about right danothy.

What I have at the moment is a spreadsheet with each day of the month on broke down into cells.

These cells have incoming (wage etc) and outgoing (train fares, cash withdrawls, mortgage etc).

I know on a certain day each month I have credit card payments, utility payments etc coming out, so they are inputted in the spreadsheet so I can keep track of my balance. Now I would like to do a similar thing with the train fares, biking etc.

danothy

I've attached screenshots to explain mine a bit more.







I'm willing to share and I could set up a blank one for you ... PM me if you're interested.

SimbaSimon

danothy wrote: »

I've attached screenshots to explain mine a bit more.







I'm willing to share and I could set up a blank one for you ... PM me if you're interested.

I admire the effort! I attempted to do something similar and enter every purchase on a database so I could monitor spending, patterns, when price increases take effect, personal inflation and so on but I gave up. :rotfl:I now track current balances and weekly shopping total and where I've spent money but thats about it. I gave up on the individual iteming as its just too time consuming.

danothy

I thought about doing it with a database and calculating a range of stats on it, but that, as you say, it encourages giving up. This way is my compromise, it doesn't take that much longer to go through a receipt and if I want to expand it later I have the data. Also it helps separate luxury purchases from essentials that you might get in the same shop.

Lyger

I don't go into quite the level of detail that Danothy does - but I do something very similar.

My spends sheet shows all spends on my main bank account, and is listed by day and category. Off the top of my head, my categories are something along the line of 'Food', 'Petrol', 'Social', 'DDs and SO's', 'Gifts', etc (I do have more, but can't remember them all). I rarely carry for than £10 in cash on me at any time, so I always use my card and just total up the items on any receipts later.

My balance sheet records any incomings (such as payday), and totals everything up for all my accounts (ISA, savings, 'emergency fund', etc). It's listed by day and account, along with outcomings/incomings for each account. My main account section of this sheet links back to my spending diary to total up how much has been spent on any day. One of the main advantages of my balance sheet is that I always know how much money I actually have as opposed to what my online banking 'thinks' I have. I always 'check off' any spends against my online statements because of this.

Finally, I have a third sheet which shows my total and average spends and savings (both for month and year so far). I've also set up another section on the third sheet where I can set a budget for each individual category I set up on my spend sheet, and I've used the excel conditional formatting options to colour code the various categories when I'm getting close to or over my budget for a category.

My spends and balance sheets cover a full year. I've arranged them so that it's grouped by month for easy navigation, and when a year is finished, I can very easily just rename the sheets and add a couple of new sheets to my workbook.

Consumerist

SimbaK2K wrote: »

I gave up on the individual iteming as its just too time consuming.

Exactly my point. In the end you can become a slave to your spreadsheets rather than the spreadsheets being a useful tool.

One of the advantages for me is that I can enter transactions-in-progress which have not yet shown on the real account so that I don't get a false impression of what balance is really available on an account. As Martin says, elsewhere on the site - banks' statements don't always tell you the real truth about your financial situation. You can have a true picture by keeping your own accounts.

pickleiamin

What I want to do is simple, but putting it on my spreadsheet is the thing that I have come stuck on.

I want to account for say £100 a month. This is for Train Fares (if I dont cycle in) and cake (if I go biking at the weekend)

Thats the bit Im getting confused over. Like I said above. My CC, DD & Other spends / withdrawls can be put on my spreadsheet no problems as I know when these have been taken out and how much. This then shows a running tally of my current account balance, CC balance etc.

pickleiamin

Right

I think Ive got it!

I simply put in my train fare each day on the spreadsheet and say £10 each weekend for biking. If I cycle into work or dont go biking, I adjust accordingly. Then its on my spreadhseet and accounted for?