Budget manager

Instructions

Make an edit-able copy of the sheet template by clicking here (you will need a free Google account to make edits to the sheet). Follow the instructions in the orange cells at the top of the spreadsheet. In summary:

1) Create your budgets by entering a name for each 'Category' and pairing them with one of the pre-defined 'Types'.

• • Note: You can choose from among the recommended 'Category' options or write-in your own (each category must have a unique name).

2) For each month, enter 'Planned' amounts of income or expense for each category.

3) Throughout the year, record transaction data. Assign a 'Category', 'Date', and '$' amount to each to populate the 'Actual' budget columns for each month.

• Note: For withdrawals, preface each '$' amount with a '-' symbol for to indicate the it is a negative transaction for formula-use. The 'Notes' field is optional- feel free to add identifying descriptions of the transactions here for your reference or for use in the report tool (see 'additional tools' below)

4) Imbalances will be highlighted in red where a budget's remaining balance is not $0. Bright green cells will indicate where corrections can be made to correct imbalances by reallocating funds to other categories. 

Explore the following additional tools:

• Monthly averages and annual totals: Click the '+' above the 'Category' column to view running monthly averages of 'Planned' and 'Actual' budgets. Click the additional '+' at the right of this section to expand annual totals for each budget.

• Calculators: Click the '+' in the upper-left of the sheet to expand various calculators. Follow the prompts under the 'IF...IS:' headers to provide variables for calculating the values indicated under the 'THEN...IS:' headers for the following scenarios:

  • Save/Spend durations: The duration (in months) that a given $ amount will accumulate ('months to SAVE') or last ('months to SPEND') under customizable income/expense scenarios.

  • Loan payoff: Estimates the impact of various loan amount, payment, and payoff timeframe features.

  • % / $ operations: Select from a list of common operations to calculate relative % and/or $ amounts.

  • Savings goals: Tracks the savings accumulated towards a given category and goal from current budget year transactions.

• Transaction reports: Scroll to the far-right for a transaction report builder. Enter filter parameters and use the checkboxes to define the categories that will populate the report (or leave all unchecked to include all categories). The nested pie chart provides a visual summary of the itemized report with transaction 'Type' summarized via the inner layer and 'Category' via the outer layer.

Happy budgeting!