Spreadsheet Inspiration

MisterMotivated

Hey all! Sorry if this is in the wrong place, I couldn't really think where best to put it, and I suppose it's about budgeting.

I have taken the day off work to wait in for a delivery and thought about making a start on my 2017 budget spreadsheet (sad I know, but I'm bored). I'm thinking of starting from scratch because it hasn't changed much in several years. I don't want to end up recreating exactly the same thing so I'm looking for inspiration for things I can add that I mightn't have thought of already. So I wondered if any MSE'ers would be willing to share a copy of their budget spreadsheet for inspiration (with personal financial info removed of course).

Who knows, it might even be a good opportunity to bring them all together and create a shareable super-spreadsheet version that others can download and use the bits they need.

colsten

My spreadsheet is called AceMoney, which has essentially the same functionality as MS Money. They are both ready-made, yet flexible, 'spreadsheets' with superb functionality. Main differences are that Ace Money is supported software and costs a one-off charge, whilst MS is out of support and is now free to download. Both do the same job.

I can - and do - enter all my known future spending as I go along, and run reports with various criteria as I need them.

agrinnall

I've stuck with MS Money since the withdrawal of Quicken from the market. I'd be surprised if any home grown spreadsheet can offer any significant benefit over using either Money or AceMoney, the only area might be in customised reporting, should you have a pressing need for that.

colsten

I find the report options very flexible and sufficient for my needs. If more is required, you could always export data to a spreadsheet and do whatever with it. Though I honestly can't think of anything over and beyond what's already possible in AceMoney. As it is, I am only using a fraction of the available reporting options.

MisterMotivated

Thank you both for the replies. I haven't used AceMoney or MS Money extensively, but I like working with spreadsheets so I prefer to create my own and customise them. I did use an app for a little while a couple of years ago that seemed really good for general budgeting, but it just couldn't do everything I was looking for. I should have said, my current "budget" spreadsheet has a lot of different bits on it rather than just budget stuff, including:

• multiple annual budget forecasts - standard (fairly liberal), conservative and "emergency", with comparison to actual spend
• calculating total assets/liabilities/net worth
• tracking growth of my pension pots
• share purchases/sales/dividends/growth
• tracking interest from various accounts (and showing how much of the £1,000 tax free allowance is left)
• mortgages tracker, including overpayment calculator
• keeping track of my monthly Direct Debits
• calculating NSDs each month
• keeping track of 0% credit cards, showing balances, limits, expiry dates, etc
• stoozing tracker
• matched betting calculator (just about to start using)
• calculating gas/electricity usage/cost
• progress towards shorts/medium/long term goals (needs work)
• various graphs and charts

I know this looks quite extreme, but most of it is automated so doesn't need hours of maintenance. Also, I shift money around accounts a lot to cover DDs etc, so I find it easier to just change the totals on the Balance Sheet tab to reflect actual balances, rather than having to make "payments" on software from one account to another to show that movement.

The above probably covers everything I really need it to, but it's been like that for a while now so I feel like it's reached it's peak and there are no improvements I can make. It just...works. But that's a bit boring so I'm looking for inspiration on how I can improve it.

arwain

Have you had a look at Ultimatcher 4 its like the industry standard when it comes to matchbetting. I would imagine you could get lots of ideas from it with regards to your own spread sheet. The developer has been working on it for years, and often up dates it to meet peoples requests.

MisterMotivated

Thank you arwain, I'll give it a try this weekend.

datlex

Not sad at all. The other day I did my pounds and pence spreadsheet up to retirement!! Mixing it up a bit by mixing reversing order of pounds next year and pence year after so that no week has a huge payment.
Tend to do my bills spreadsheet in December when I have a couple of weeks off at Christmas.