'How many spreadsheets and graphs do you have?' blog discussion.

curlygirl1971

Eco_Miser wrote: »

Most importantly one telling me how much and when to move between accounts (esp. Lloyds Vantage and Halifax Reward) to meet funding requirements, have money available for payments, and maximise interest.

Do you all put your totals at the bottom of the sheet, where you have to scroll to see them, or near the top in a consistent, easily seen position?
My totals are nearly always in row 3, with the sheet title in row 1, and column headers in row 3.

Love Halifax Rewards - SS's (and online banking) have helped me move money around to the best home so that on any one day I'm earning the best interest.

Totals - My Spending Account (which is one of my Current Accounts) has a running balance and then the expenditure is also put into columns (eg Food, Transport...) At the end of each month I have a total, at the end of the spreadsheet I have the month and also year analysis (I also keep previous years analysis here). This is 'spending' by budget categories so I can compare against my ideal budget

Am pretty sure there might be a 'Go-to' function that you could put into the top of your spreadsheet - will see if I can try and find something. I'm sure I've seen it previously in a spreadsheet

But also any information I want to see in summary format is also pulled from the source sheet into the summary sheet. I'm not overly bothered about summary by spending, I'm interested in what I had, what I have and what I expect to have and so I have a summary sheet that shows account balances, asset value, mortgage at the end of each month (effectively a Net Worth)

andreaseedhouse

I have spreadsheets for:

• my weight (including graphs of weight and BMI)
• current account balance as of day before pay day each month
• holiday expenses (to calculate how much a holiday will cost)
• split train costs (this calculates cheap ways of splitting tickets for my common journeys)
• a mortgage calculator to determine if it is worth fixing anytime soon...
• new house costs - a list of everything we have spent on doing up the new house.

My partner even made a gant chart for all our house renovations in a spreadsheet. We are both engineers so I think that explains the geekiness a bit

Andrea

gmgmgm

Those juggling backups to memory sticks should take a look at a service like Dropbox- easy to use and free backup for 2GB of spreadsheets. Can be shared across computers as well.

If you need to keep similar control of less numerical things like records- try MS Onenote - fantastic software for text as Excel is for numbers.

curlygirl1971

MSE_Martin wrote: »

Hmmm reading the above I think maybe I should set up

spreadsheetdates dot com where we match up people on dates depending on what they graph

What we really need Martin is MSE Roadshows.......Seriously, forget the Good Food Show, forget The Gadget Show Live, forget the Wedding Show blah blah blah.......I want an MSE Roadshow - live 'demos', masterclasses, product representation, personalities, comps. But please arrange it so that we can get Cashback on the tickets

edinburgher

Do you all put your totals at the bottom of the sheet, where you have to scroll to see them, or near the top in a consistent, easily seen position?
My totals are nearly always in row 3, with the sheet title in row 1, and column headers in row 3.

I'm exactly the opposite, I tend to have totals at the bottom where they'll (hopefully) be a pleasant surprise. Delayed gratification and all that, my reward for updating a bunch of tedious figures!

SusanC_2

My main spreadsheet started out as tracking out main bank account but morphed into a massive budget spreadsheet. It has a tab for each year tracking all bank account transactions. Each of these has a monthly summary and an annual summary. They also feed into a main summary page which has a more detailed breakdown of annual income and expenditure and includes a rough budget projection for the next 25 years. The current year tab feed into a graph of balance with a marker on it for the current day. Also each year a tab which calculates Tax Credits, one for my husband's December employment (I enter daily hours and it calculates NI and tax and feeds forecasted pay into the main page and then I update with actual figures from the payslips), one for the annual holiday and one for annual expenditure on the house (so I can keep track of how much home owning costs us vs. renting). I also have a tab for presents with budget, actual spend, ideas and presents bought over the last few years. Each year I make a new transaction tab into which I enter forecasted transactions based on previous year's expenditure and expected dates of things like holidays/car service etc. and include monthly allocations for certain categories such as groceries etc to give an indication of cashflow. As we receive bills for the year (e.g. council tax) and the year progresses, I update with actual transaction and keep track of cashflow and projections for being over/under budget.

I have separate spreadsheets to track gas usage, electricity usage and grocery expenditure which all feed into the main spreadsheet and are better disposed for producing lots of graphs.

I also have spreadsheets which mainly function as calculators such as ones I use when working out the best home/car insurance deal although they don't feature graphs.

I also created spreadsheets for choosing names before our daughter was born and created graphs to show the popularity of our favoured names over recent years.

Plus various others but I'm not going to describe every single one.

SusanC_2

Eco_Miser wrote: »

Do you all put your totals at the bottom of the sheet, where you have to scroll to see them, or near the top in a consistent, easily seen position?
My totals are nearly always in row 3, with the sheet title in row 1, and column headers in row 3.

If totals are not visible without scrolling then any I really want to be able to see easily I put somewhere at the top and make use of the "freeze panes" option.

Eco_Miser

SusanC wrote: »

If totals are not visible without scrolling then any I really want to be able to see easily I put somewhere at the top and make use of the "freeze panes" option.

That's what I do.

curlygirl1971 wrote: »

Am pretty sure there might be a 'Go-to' function that you could put into the top of your spreadsheet - will see if I can try and find something. I'm sure I've seen it previously in a spreadsheet

<ctrl><down arrow> moves to the bottom of the column, (or to the very bottom if repeated) but my point is that my way all the totals are always in sight (using freeze) and in consistent positions, eg B3 in any of my bank account sheets is the current balance.

Ariane

I'm relieved to see that there are so many people like myself (and thanks for coming out, Martin!). Since taking early retirement, with the question "Will we still manage?" I have kept a cashflow spreadsheet, a variant of those mentioned by several people. It records all months of the year, and all income and regular payments plus scheduled cash withdrawals with space for ad hoc amounts; each month has a running total of credit card payments, so my current account budget and balance are predictable through the year. Negative figures show in red, but that's fine as long as they are a month or two ahead! It has a graph for at-a-glance patterns. Couldn't do without it. Investments are in another file, and as life isn't all money there's one too for golf scores. But let's be proud of this, it's a form of creativity and mental exercise as well as being very useful.

iansoady

Spreadsheets? pah.

The only tool for really being able to analyse and dissect what's going on is a relational database. I have one I've recorded every item of income / expenditure for the last 6 years since I was forcibly retired. Every item has a category and a context (eg holidays, capital costs). Categories are cross-referenced to reporting categories eg the Observer inflation ones.

It allows all sorts of comparisons, what-ifs and historical comparisons. For example, current year's overall running expenditure is 6.58% less than the pro-rata figure from last year. And is 15.9% greater than the year I started.

A well designed database provides the base data that allows all sorts of analyses that you didn't think of to start with, and is far more powerful than a spreadsheet. And if I do want to see something in spreadsheet view, it's easy to export a table or a query.