Getting a hold on your spending and expenses is the first step to budgeting. This tracking spreadsheet will allow for the automated reporting of expenses by month and by year for up to 250 expense categories and can handle tens of thousands of individual transactions in the data tab.
$45.00 USD
Note, the Excel version uses dynamic arrays on the last two filter tabs, which will require Office 365 and to be in the Office Insiders program. If you don't mind that, you can ignore the last two filter tabs.
My goal with this Accounting tool was to make it really easy to use. The data entry is simple. Just enter:
- Expense Description
- Expense Category
- Amount
- Date
On cell D3 on the 'monthly expense summary' tab you can define the start month of the reporting period. The template will report expenses by category in a 3 year monthly and annual summary.
There is a simple 'validation' tab to enter a unique list of up to 250 expense categories. That will populate the available options on the 'data' tab when you select the category for each individual expense item.
Budget vs. Actual
There is a row to enter you total monthly expense budget and that will show up in a nice visualization comparing the monthly actual expenses to the defined budget. An annual view is also built with its own chart.
There are two filter tabs that let the user select a single expense category and see all transactions in that category. One of the filters auto-sorts by most recent date and the other sorts by highest expense amount.
The point of this tool is to give yourself accountability and look at what actually happened each month and how a budget was blown or beat.
I would suggest using the Google Sheet version, but the Excel version works just fine as well.
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