Financial Accounting Spreadsheet - A Request

Nardge

Hello Forumites!

On different occasions in different threads people have mentioned their "Spreadsheet".

I have something similar that details my various savings and investments as separate tables in Microsoft Word.

Admittedly that's a little primitive as I must manually edit it all once a month which can be time-consuming.

Would anyone be willing to forward me a copy of their own BLANK Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or similar? This could then be populated by my own headings and numbers, which presumably add themselves up as subtotals and a grand-total automatically across sections?

With Kind Regards

Zero_Sum

Download MS Money

Alexland

Tracking financials in MS Word sounds almost as painful as using Paint or Notepad.

My view is you are better building your own spreadsheet starting small and adding detail as your understanding improves. That way you know the workings well enough to maintain and resolve errors.

You could start by copying your existing tables into Excel and replacing the totals with basic formula.

From there it really depends what calculations are of use to you. Some people like to track their return, others track against a target, some just like to know their net worth, or track key dates, etc.

Alex

barnstar2077

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3-MDhnZzPU

I suggest you use Google Sheets. It is free and easy to use.

Apodemus

Alexland wrote: »

My view is you are better building your own spreadsheet starting small and adding detail as your understanding improves. That way you know the workings well enough to maintain and resolve errors.

Totally agree! You need it to work for your own situation, a spreadsheet created by someone else will never do that and you may risk drawing the wrong conclusions.

DireEmblem

Just a thought - but why not try MoneyDashboard - its free?

littlemoney

DireEmblem wrote: »

Just a thought - but why not try MoneyDashboard - its free?

It free but they may sell your data to make money.

webjaved

littlemoney wrote: »

It free but they may sell your data to make money.

Which is why he should opt to use Google Sheets :money:

Alexland

webjaved wrote: »

Which is why he should opt to use Google Sheets :money:

Google would never use your data to make money...

EthicsGradient

If you want a free spreadsheet on your own machine rather than Google's cloud, try LibreOffice (word processor, PowerPoint-style presentation software etc. too, if you want that).

I agree with others that you're best off starting simple and working out what you need or want. The core of my financial spreadsheet is a list of my investments - purchase price, units, current value - and then I've added columns to that as they've seemed useful, things like capital gain, income that is potentially taxable for each year, accumulation for OEICs that affect the capital gains payable, etc. And rows for savings accounts and their interest, maturity dates, stocks/units I've sold, possible ideas for what to buy next, or move into an ISA shelter, and other stuff.

Make a copy before you make major changes, in case what seems to be a bright idea turns out to be not-so-great for how to organise it after all.

colsten

webjaved wrote: »

Which is why he should opt to use Google Sheets

Why mess about with spreadsheets when you have ready-made personal finance managers such as MS Money?