Budgeting with an Excel worksheet is certainly one practical tool for coping with keeping one’s finances under control.
1. Blank Spread sheet
Open a new Excel document. Label the sheet as “Monthly Budget” or whatever name you prefer. You can use column headings to organize your data cleanly and legibly. Use these columns:
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Date: Date of every transaction
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Description: Short description for each transaction (for example, rent, groceries, pay)
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Income: Amount collected.
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Expense: Amount expended
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Balance: Running total of how much you have left from collecting minus spending.
These headings you can use to build a pretty simple budget you’ll actually use, and which you can update pretty regularly.
2. Inputting Monthly Income and Expenses
Enter your monthly budget by inputting your income and expenses for the month. Input the actual values or just estimates if you’re planning ahead.
• Income: all income earned throughout the month, although you can group them.
• Cost: State the cost for the month and categorize all the expenses as fixed cost and variable cost. Example: The old one will be rent, loan etc. New one will be grocery, entertainment etc.
TIP: Never forget one single line item for unforeseen cost or some pocket cash every month to tackle with the emergencies. It adds a safety cushion for the budget.
3. Use Basic Excel Formulas
Excel formulas enable easier calculation and updatable budget. Below are the basic formulas you would require:
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SUM Formula: This is an addition formula which means adding the sum of everything in your income or even expenses together. You use =SUM (cell range). For example, if the income is listed between B2 and B6 you will type this down to =SUM (B2:B6) in the given cell where you would think the total would go.
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Running Balance: Formula To show your running balance-total income minus expenses-as you enter the data, use this formula in the “Balance” column: =Starting Balance + Income – Expense.
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Auto-Update Balance: To have the balance, automatically calculate with each new entry, look up to the row above. That is, if the starting balance is in cell D2, type =D2 + B3 – C3 into D3.
These simple formulas allow you to maintain running totals and absorb a whole lot of information fast.
4. Categorize Your Expenses with Tables
The “Table” in Excel can help you select, filter, and analyse data a lot more easily. The following explains how to go about doing this.
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Choose a column range containing income and expense data.
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Under Home Insert on the ribbon tab select Table then click OK.
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You name the column whatever you please and use it to break down an “Income” and an “Expense.”
And now you’re all set and you can filter by date and by category so you can see right away where your one-time thing spending is
5. Add a Summary at the Top or on one of the sidebars which will give quick and easy take-away information –
Summary at top or right side of page carries most important information quickly. It contains
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Total Income: All your income entries.
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Total Expenses: Adds all your entry on expenses.
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Net Balance: A result of the total expenses subtracted from total income.
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Remaining Balance: It keeps updating itself as you feed in more data and makes you realize the money that is left with you after you spend on your needs.
These summary statistics make you view the details in the wink of budget tracking without scrolling.
6. Record Your Expenses Conclusion
You can even see your income and expenditure on graphs with the choices of graph in Excel. To plot it,
• Create your income and expenses.
• Tab>Charts> Click pie, bar or whatever you want to use.
Now you will begin to see the most prominent categories of spending especially via charts. To that effect, an appropriately scaled pie graph might help illustrate how your budgeting stands on what expenditures.
7. Utilize Conditional Formatting
This utility in Excel by conditional formatting highpoints certain values or even cells within your budget which may highpoint trends or troubles for you. For example,
1. Home > Conditional Formatting > New Rule.
2. Select the type of rule. You can, for example, highlight areas of cells that indicate that the cost is greater than the income or colour range showing which sectors are getting carried away with their spending.
Conditional formatting makes budget less fun to view, mainly because it points out areas most likely going to require spending a few extra dollars.
8. Save the budget as a template
After you will have set up your budget, save it as a template that you will open, and access it every month.
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Open your file; then click to save as, excel template has an option for your file type.
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Write down your name in the template and save it in a folder that you can easily trace.
You can open every month, input data, regarding the new month. You can track your changes.
Conclusion
Easy formulas, multiple aids on a table and charts as well as proper alignment with the data will ensure achieving much enlightened decisions concerning your current financial position and how you might go about obtaining the established goals. As a student, freelancer, or for one running a household-they all matter with the budget placed within an Excel-for keeping on top of how one’s financial health is faring.
These basics master the art of running successful budgets. Happy budgeting!