The Banking & Savings Spreadsheet Discussion Thread

BooJewels

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81863836#Comment_81863836

Isn't all personal money tracking a form of double entry bookkeeping?

The only thing I don't record in my spreadsheet is where a debit becomes an asset - which you would in a business environment - if you bought materials, stock or equipment. If I buy food at the supermarket, I debit my current account by the value of the shop, but I don't bother recording the meat in my freezer as an asset. But if I move money from savings to my nominated current account in order to buy food, then I have two entries - a debit in my savings account, a credit in my current account and then another debit when I spend it.

If I had my time over, I'd probably use a dedicated money app, but when I started my spreadsheet about 30 years ago, it was a very basic version of what I have now - it has simply evolved as my life has got more complicated and the number of accounts increased. But the way I record my monthly household account (well, all accounts to some degree) is pretty much the same - one column for pending transactions so that I can project forward for the month to see what I'll need to add to cover it, or what I have left to spend, then a second column when any transaction is made and cleared. By the end of the month, both should be the same.

I colour the description column cells according to their status - white when they're still a projection, orange when the transaction has been made, but not cleared (such as a debit card transaction), then pale yellow when it's cleared, paid and done. I recently found an old exercise book from the 1980s where I'd basically done the same on paper, before computers. So, having done it for a long time that way, I don't think I want to start learning a new method.

I'd never even heard of a pivot table until I read about them here - so having looked at what they are, this might be something I could do with learning how to do - especially for tracking monthly interest payments - as I like to see totals for the month, year and the cumulative total - then have to extrapolate the right bits for my tax return, so I think I need to set aside some learning time to look at this. Each year my sheet gets more complicated.

sausage_time

I wrote my own system back in the 1980s because I could not find anything suitable at a reasonable or zero cost. I was also concerned about obsolescence. It has evolved slightly over the years and been reimplemented on a number of platforms. I still miss my Blackberry.

As above, double entry bookkeeping only happens in my system when I transfer money (to savings, to pay off a credit card, for example) but that I enter as a single "Transfer" transaction which is applied to each account.

I have around 100k categorised transactions. I chuckle when I see a trip to the ATM to withdraw £2. Now that was a wild night in the pub back in the day.

It's really interesting to see how the amount I have spent on food, cars, pets, bills etc has evolved in time.

LHW99

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81863880#Comment_81863880

Well, I have total money in, versus each individual payment out. Provided it's £1 in and 99p (etc) out I'm happy.

I do a year-end talley of income, expenditure and change in savings / investments. As long as that's mainly positive / equal, then all OK.

Somehow in double entry credit and debit as I understand them seem to become twisted. Money from income that goes to savings isn't a debit (in my thoughts) because it increases my wealth. Paying for food etc is a "real" debit.

masonic

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81864139#Comment_81864139

I'm aware we're going a little off-topic, so will keep it brief, but in the double ledger scenario, you'd see money from income credit your current account (matched to an income sub-account where it would not be treated as a debit). Then, if you transferred it to a savings account, you'd see a debit in the current account and a credit in the savings account. The overall net effect would be an increase in net worth, neutral on the current account and increase in savings.

david72

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81863836#Comment_81863836

You don't really need to worry about the details of double entry book-keeping in practice in GnuCash (and probably most other similar programs); I didn't understand what that meant at first either (essentially just that each transaction appears in both accounts involved).

You only need to enter the transaction once in your current account ledger as "Transfer to Smaug Savings" (or whatever) and the transaction automagically appears in the corresponding savings account ledger; you don't need to enter the transactions twice. Then, if you look at the savings account ledger later, it will show you where each transaction came from.

If you want, you can just download the program and play with it for 5 or 10 minutes to see if it makes sense to you (it will give you the option for it to create a sample account setup when you run it for the first time, which you can then edit, add to or delete as needed once you get going).

gatters

Question. I use the Stocks data functionality in Excel to automatically enter recent share prices. Is there any way of automatically entering the most recent CPI rate or the current BoE base rate?

sausage_time

I don't use Excel so can't supply examples but you should be able to lift the data from resources like these.

Interest rates and Bank Rate: our latest decision | Bank of England https://share.google/25Lc05NDpzCh1W7vh

Consumer price inflation tables - Office for National Statistics https://share.google/haFAbHCoDKYu56IkC

How do you get your share prices?