Budget Planner Spreadsheet Help Thread

KateinD

Having downloaded the spreadsheet a couple of days ago and discovered in this forum that I could unprotect the data (thanks both for the spreadsheet and the password!), I started to create my own customized version.


I changed some of the formulae so that I could eliminate the “Other spending” lines and while doing this, I noticed a bug - one which is unlikely to affect many users:


If you enter a value less than 1 in the weekly/monthly/yearly spending columns, this value is not included in the monthly spending calculation.


The reason is easy to see; if you look at the rule for calculating the monthly value, it first checks that only one of the weekly/monthly/yearly values has been filled in, and then calculates the monthly spend from whichever of these values is greater than or equal to ONE (not zero!).


Obviously, adult users in the UK are unlikely to be entering values less than one, but 99p a week still amounts to around 50 GBP a year which would not be included in the total spending.[FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]The spreadsheet also allows you to enter negative spends which are ignored when calculating the monthly value, for the same reason. If anyone did enter a significant negative value, this would lead to even greater inaccuracy in calculating the spending totals. IMO, the spreadsheet should either only allow positive values or ensure that negative values are handled correctly (i.e. the check in the rule should be for a value not equal to zero, and not as present, for a value greater than or equal to one – in this case, you’d also have to change the rules that check that only one of the weekly/monthly/yearly values has been filled in, since they check for values greater than zero).[/FONT]

gosia1

Please help, i am looking to make this spreadsheet a weekly one but i don't know how? it has a 'week' , 'per month' , 'year' collumn so it allows me to see 1 specific week or month or year! I would like to be able to put the data on weekly basis and see how much things cost me per month and year but again i can only insert 1 week but there is 52 weeks in a year Anyone please help.

I'd like to add i am new to this website and budget spreadsheet so please excuse me if the question seems stupid but i honestly can't find the solution/answer anywhere.:(

anniecave

gosia1 wrote: »

Please help, i am looking to make this spreadsheet a weekly one but i don't know how? it has a 'week' , 'per month' , 'year' collumn so it allows me to see 1 specific week or month or year! I would like to be able to put the data on weekly basis and see how much things cost me per month and year but again i can only insert 1 week but there is 52 weeks in a year Anyone please help.

I would suggest a separate spreadsheet for this. If you mean you want to keep a list of all your expenditure and analyse it. You could just keep a list of all the things you spend (including the dates) and have a column that puts the items into the categories eg gas, electricity, mobile phone, food, rent etc. Then if say you do it for 4 weeks then your regular items you can divide the total for each category by 4 to get an idea of weekly amounts. If you did this over the course of a year then you can divide the totals over 52 to get a weekly amount for everything, even annual things.

You can do quite a lot with excel.

As a starter, if you have access to your bank account online, you can download all your statements to a spreadsheet. If you use your debit card a lot then you can probably quite easily categorise you spending this way. Or if you you use a credit card, do the same thing, download the transactions into a spreadsheet and identify what the categories are. If you use cash a lot then you also need to record what you are spending the cash on.

I think the idea of the budget planner is at first you do have to guess at how much you think you spend.

Then you can use a spreadsheet over time to see if these figures are actually correct or not.

oldman32

gosia1 wrote: »

Please help, i am looking to make this spreadsheet a weekly one but i don't know how? it has a 'week' , 'per month' , 'year' collumn so it allows me to see 1 specific week or month or year! I would like to be able to put the data on weekly basis and see how much things cost me per month and year but again i can only insert 1 week but there is 52 weeks in a year Anyone please help.

I'd like to add i am new to this website and budget spreadsheet so please excuse me if the question seems stupid but i honestly can't find the solution/answer anywhere.:(

Hi,
the Budget Planner is a passive tool that will give you a snapshot of your finances at one particular time. It can be modified to do what you want but like all things computer, you need to maintain the data for it to be useful.

I did modify the Budget Planner to allow data input of spend against budget but it uses marcos - if you want a copy to play with & see if it does what you want, send me a PM & I will forward one to you.

david_hellier

FYI there are now a few free sheets for MSE users on www.d-an-g.co.uk

robatwork

your link is broken David but that's a useful site, thanks

timmy_toad

I am using numbers on a macbookpro i have just downloaded and started editing my first ever spreadsheet budget.

I enter my income under the weekly column and it gets put in the right column under monthly total.

But there is a £1.00 added to another column in between the two ??, this is what i don't understand, what is this all about please ?

tim

Tixy

timmy_toad wrote: »

I am using numbers on a macbookpro i have just downloaded and started editing my first ever spreadsheet budget.

I enter my income under the weekly column and it gets put in the right column under monthly total.

But there is a £1.00 added to another column in between the two ??, this is what i don't understand, what is this all about please ?

tim

I think perhaps because you are using mac you may be able to see columns that are usually hidden on the spreadsheet.
Columns F, G, H are usually hidden but if you enter something in the Weekly column that will put a number 1 in colum F, if your enter something in the Monthly column that will put a 1 in a colum G. They shouldn't really be a £ sign, thats just a formatting error.
These hidden columns are used only to ensure that a user just uses 1 column in each row of the table.
If you enter figures in more than 1 column then the '1's that you can see (but are usually hidden) are what will cause an error message to appear in the Monthly Total column.

timmy_toad

Tixy wrote: »

I think perhaps because you are using mac you may be able to see columns that are usually hidden on the spreadsheet.
Columns F, G, H are usually hidden but if you enter something in the Weekly column that will put a number 1 in colum F, if your enter something in the Monthly column that will put a 1 in a colum G. They shouldn't really be a £ sign, thats just a formatting error.
These hidden columns are used only to ensure that a user just uses 1 column in each row of the table.
If you enter figures in more than 1 column then the '1's that you can see (but are usually hidden) are what will cause an error message to appear in the Monthly Total column.

Tixy, thank you very much indeed, that explains everything, i can understand it fully now. Wonderfull, thanks. :T

tim

BlueRoses

Hi

Ive downloaded this Budget Planner to my desk top but cant get into it as its asking for a product key -what is this please and how do i get one

thanks
im using excell 2010 is thats any help