The Ultimate Google Sheets Budget Template Tutorial for Beginners!
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- Опубліковано 4 лип 2024
- If you’re looking for a quick and easy budgeting tool, the Google Sheets budget template is a great option to track your daily expenses. For the past five years, I've used this free budgeting spreadsheet to keep my spending under control. This video walks you step-by-step through the process of creating a budget with Google Sheets, including my best tips to customize the template.
Prefer a written version of this tutorial? I've got you covered here: michaelsaves.com/budgeting/go...
CHAPTERS
0:00 Introduction to Google Sheets Budgeting Tutorial
0:20 Locate and Open the Google Sheets Monthly Budget Template
0:38 Start With a Clean Slate
2:52 Customize a Sample Monthly Budget
7:16 Make a Copy of the Sample Budget and Plan Your Spending
8:31 Track Your Expenses Throughout the Month
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This is literally GOLD.
Thanks, man.
Thank you so so much for this Michael! I've been looking for something like this for years now! Thankyou!
This was so helpful! Thanks for walking through everything step by step!
Thank you so much. I have been trying to do this for hours and you just helped me so much.
great tutorial!
Thank you, Michael.
So many of these budget programs are way more complicated than I need. This is perfect. Thank you for spending the time in making this tutorial!
This made me understand so much better I was lost but now im super excited to start budgeting.
This video was amazing, excellent job! Thank you so much!
I'm up and running in 10 minutes. That's pretty awesome, Michael Saves!
Really excellent video. My wife and I toggled back and forth between your video and our budget in google sheets. Thansk for doing this. Very much appreciated
This video is awesome! I have been putting off budgeting for a long time because I was always intimidated by the process - but you've made everything so clear and straightforward with the template! Thank you so much, Michael!
Thank you! I never knew this existed and now I'm using it and I love it!
THANK YOU! Needed this
This is amazing, thank you!
Thank You! This was exactly what I needed to simplify our budget. I am not comfortable with this type of thing but your video was perfect! Great explanation and detail without unnecessary talking.
Great video and explanation Michael! Thank you!!
SO helpful - thank you!!
This included nice clear and concise instructions, Thanks,👍 Michael.
Clear, Concise and to the point. Great job. I installed the app, so easy to load transactions as they happen. Yahoo!!
So much info in a relatively short video. Thank you! For someone who has always experienced a mental block with spreadsheets, this video made me excited about befriending the essential tool. Thank you!!
Thank you very much!! I'm looking forward to starting 2024 with a vision and a plan to follow in order to stop procrastinating and finally achieve my goals!
Thank you so much for this very detailed and easy to follow tutorial! You explain things so well and I appreciate it! Thank you!
This is amazing! I came to UA-cam searching for tutorials because I looked at the Google budgeting spreadsheets and had no idea how to even get started with them. I am so glad I found this video - I'm all set up and ready for the month. Thank you!!!
Thank you very much for this tutorial. It was very helpful and easy to understand.
Dude- This was so incredibly helpful! Thank you so very much! I have literally never budgeted before so thank you so so so much! Give yourself a raise my friend!
Awesome video. I was intimidated by budgeting because I was unsure how to go about it but this has been a tremendous help. I downloaded the app and this has been an excellent tool to have and has not only simplified my budget but made it easy to stick to it.
Super helpful. Thank you 😄
Man! You are awesome! I was miserable with how I was tracking my expenses. Belive it or not, in a .txt file LOL.
This is so great. Thank you for a hundred times.
Awesome tutorial! Thank you so much!
Thank you! Much appreciated!
Thank you. So easy to follow.
Thank you for this video!
Brilliant. Thanks so very much.
This has helped me so much!!!! THANK YOUUUUUUU
Thank you for this clear and simple explanation of how to track money and budgeting. As most of them have stated I also had trouble using mobile apps to keep track of my money and cannot get a clear overview. Thank you again for explaining this clearly I am yet to try this out and it seems it's very simple with also having the ability to record with the phone which I did not know much about until you explained. Seems everything can be recorded and transferred to other sheets automatically.
Great work! Thanks a lot for taking your time to explain this to us
This is great thanks
Really helpful video, thanks for posting !
This is legit. Thank you.
This was outstanding. I recently retired because where I worked for 30 years closed. I am not old enough to collect social security and am living on savings, which I will have to be extra careful with to make it last for the next few years. This is a huge help, and I've downloaded the mobile app, too. Thank you so much.
Great video !
Great sharing. Thank you,
Great, I just started using it last week, Then I found your tutorial
Super awesome tutorial. Very grateful for your time and effort!😎👍👍🙏🙏Thank you very much!
you made this very easy . Thank you!
Very helpful video.😊😊
This is really a great video. Thank you for sharing this. I’m not a pro at this yet but with your help I am off to a good start. Thanks you
Damn this was fast, short, and very informative. much thanks man
thank you so much for this, as a 33 year old millennial starting my first business and who studied philosophy - I can't tell you how helpful this is, in a practical and grounding way. I suppose I should have learned basic finance earlier. But as the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now. 🤟😁
Thank you!
Thank you.
I had this budget template so screwed up before I found this video, LOL. Thank you so much!
Thanks I spent a whole day to find you
I tried using the budget template on my own and was unsuccessful...couldn't figure it out. Your video is an excellent tool to get this started. Thank you!!
Thanks
This is super super helpful!! I also have my transactions upload automatically by using an IFTT tie-in from my banking app to google sheets, which adds a row to the spreadsheet every time I use my card :)
Thanku
My Google sheets budget comes with numbers in the "actual" column and when I go to edit it just has a formula. I can't figure out how to correct it but maybe I can just delete those rows. This video is great! I'm gonna continue watching now 😊
First, this was so helpful! I have a question about fixed expenses that are not monthly… and where/how you recommend tracking those and planning for them. I guess it’s similar to others’ questions about how to save up and track accruing money.. or rolling over leftover money.
I have an old blog post/video on this topic! michaelsaves.com/save-money/google-sheets-budget-irregular-expenses/
This is a good tutorial. I only have a few things I would do differently. Number one is the groceries. I rarely just buy groceries when i go to the store. I'll buy food and things like trash bags or dish soap. So doing it your way, i'd have to go through the receipt and separate out the groceries. On mine I just put a Household Shopping tab and that includes anything I buy for the household like groceries or soap or tin foil or toilet paper. I also don't like what you did with the "fixed expenses" since utilities tend to be different each month and I want to be able to record them all individually in the transactions tab. I want to see the electric, water, cell phone, Netflix separately not combined into one category where I can't see how much each are individually so I can tell if one is higher than I want it to be or if I need to cut the netflix a few months or something.
So I'm 66 years old and for the first time ever this is a computer based budget tutorial I can actually follow. I am retiring sometime in the next two years and need to actually track my finances in detail for the first time ever. I have always done OK just generally knowing what is going on with my finances up to now but times are changing. I love this video!
I noticed he has a written version of the tutorial in the video description, if that would make it easier for you.
@@ProdiJoee Thanks!
@ProdiJoee I feel pretty dumb as I realize UA-cam lets you control the speed. All I have to do is slow it down 25%.... I deleted my updated comment.
thank you for such a great video, how can we change Currency?
Huge help Thank you!!! If I wanted to make this also a weekly- is it as simply as just changing income to weekly/the text to weekly.
Yes you could do that!
THis is so fucking cool!!!! Thank you Michael! Instant subscribe.
Thanks for the great video!!! I'm wondering if there is a good way to log transactions in mixed currency?
Thanks for the awesome and clear tutorial. This will make things so much easier!
Do you have any suggestions for how to sort the expense and income line items (transactions page) by date automatically? I can see things getting out of order quickly, and having them arranged by date would make cross-checking with bank statements much easier. Thanks again!
I just add the date to the transactions tab as I record expenses in real time.
I love this spreadsheet, but how do you manage having two cards? Is there a way to do a "transfer" option and all amounts add up?
This has been very helpful, thank you! I just have a question, if anyone knows. Why put fixed expenses as part of planned expenses? It just adds my total fixed expenses to my itemized expenses which doubles things under Planned Totals.
I feel like I must be missing something?
How do you create more spaces on the expenses side under the transactions tab
Great video. Do you have one or plan to make one for using Sheets to track investments? Thanks so much.
I use the Personal Capital app to track my investments and net worth. Mint is another free option.
Hey thanks for making this video, great explanation and exactly what I was looking for! I'm customizing mine a bit and I'm wondering if it's possible to change the color of the "highlighted cells", the ones that denote a place to edit information. Normally that is simple enough by pressing the "fill color" button but it's not possible on this one. Any ideas? Thanks.
Never mind, I found it right after I typed this out lol. It's under conditional formatting if anyone else here is looking.
Hello Michael! Thank you very much for teaching us about this free Google Spreadsheet. I had a question about what the "opening balance" that is inserted in cell L8 would be. I'm still lost on this concept, could you explain it better and give an example?
I don't use that field (I think I mentioned in the video, but maybe not.) I guess you could use it as a starting balance for the month. For me, I blank it out and just log transactions with this spreadsheet.
Thanks for the video! How do you track savings? Is it first deducted from the Expense side and then added to the Income side? In your example, I see you have a deduction for transfer to savings, but I didn't see an entry on the income side. I want to make sure I'm doing it right. Also, is your starting balance whatever is left over from the previous month, if any, correct? Thanks, I like this! I've struck BUDGET GOLD!
I just use it as a monthly expense tracker. I use Mint and Empower to track net worth over time, which is why I don't have fields for balances of my checking and savings accounts anywhere. However, you can use the spreadsheet to track money over time or play around with the annual budget version in Google Sheets. Let's say you decide to use the starting balance field -- enter whatever money you have in your bank accounts. Then, do the budget as normal for the month to track expenses. Then, adjust the starting balance for the following month based on how much you were over/under the previous month.
Thank you so much for the tutorial, it's very useful. Is there a way of changing the $ symbol to £ symbol?
Yes! ua-cam.com/video/SKX7WaMos9M/v-deo.html
How do you fix it for rounding? Example power bill is 92.14 it drops the 14
Hi, thank you for the informative video, it helps me alot. One quick question, what does "starting balance" on the summary mean? And do I need to keep it 0 monthly? thank you for helping
I zero it out. I guess you could use it if you had carryover money from a previous month. I just don’t use the sheet that way.
I'm not sure if someone has mentioned this before but if you control+select both the Summary tab and the Transaction tab and then duplicate, you can have more Summary/Transactions sets' for other months that will work independently of the original one but still within the same document.
Hello Michael, would you be able to explain how to add in if you are putting money into a savings account each month for a specific event/trip/etc.. Right now I have them just as a transaction with their own category but it still shows that I am spending that money each month rather than saving and I just keep track of the savings on a different tab. BUT I would love it if there was a way to incorporate that into the summary sheet without having another sheet to track.
TIA!
For this I do Transfer to Savings as a transaction line and keep it as part of my expenses.
Question for the “starting balance” tab rather than zero can you just put whatever money you have at the beginning of the month?
Of course. That works!
Love this video but what about annual expenses that are fixed? currently, i calculate them down to a monthly amount and add them to fixed expenses. is there a better way?
This is what I do!
Hi, first of all, thank you for this video!! My partner and I have set up our own with our limited knowledge of google sheets/excel and we are shifting to the one youve showed! Took me 15 minutes to get it all done w your tutorial. Love it.
However, I have a few queries if you dont mind sharing the way of doing it:
1. Is it possible to have two transaction tab with only one summary? (One transaction tab for each of us however we would like our summary to be combined) - i tried to copy the transaction tab however the functions dont connect to the summary tab like the first transaction tab.
2. How do I have a continuous system on month to month basis? Meaning, any balances are carried forward to next month’s ‘automatically’? Or needs manual transfer still?
Btw, would really appreciate more series like this for intermediate and advanced! Or elaboration or more detailed system of the beginner one. Love it!
Thanks,
Illy
To answer your first question, you could create separate categories for each person. Lunch money person 1. Lunch money person 2. I don’t know another way. As for question 2, I get this a lot but that’s what I use Empower for. I only use this template for monthly expense tracking. I will look into it.
Hello I have been searching for something similar to this spreadsheet, but I haven't been able to find one that I can import my CSV files from my credit cards. Where I can I find out a spreadsheet template that I can import CSV files ?
(Please)!!
Great video Michael, thanks! Quick question, how do I change the currency tp £?
I have a separate video here: ua-cam.com/video/SKX7WaMos9M/v-deo.html
@@MichaelSavesPlus Star! Thank you
Nice Works Michael. is there a way to use only one sheet for every month instead of make a copy ?
I’m not sure of a way to do that.
Hi, Thanks for this. Im new to spread sheets so I appreciate the simplicity. But i have a lot of transactions from multiple cards. Is there a way to upload transactions from credit cards and bank downloads etc to track spending versus manually entering each line by line as per your example?
Have you tried Mint? You can sync your accounts with Mint and it does the work for you.
Can you discuss the Start Balance and End Balance section?
I zero it out because I don't use it. But you could use it if you wanted to roughly track your net worth? I do that with the Mint and Personal Capital apps.
@@MichaelSaves In the Get Started section, the sheet says enter in cell L8. Enter what? My account balance at the first of the month?
@@gregpulley421 this video I explain my method. I ignore that section.
So under the income section on paychecks we only put paychecks or should we do a total monthly income? As well?
If you use the income side, definitely have paychecks. But you can add other income and I would recommend that. Even things like bank account interest on your savings count as income! If you need more rows, you add them the same way as I showed for expenses.
Thank you for the great tutorial. Everything went smoothly as I followed your instructions step by step, but when I tried to add the extra expense categories using the data validation tool it didn't add the extras like it did in yours. What am I doing wrong? I tried it several times with no luck. Will I need to start over and create a whole new thing or is there a way to fix it now that I'm on the last step in the process? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you :)
You may need to start over. I have written instructions here as well: michaelsaves.com/budgeting/google-sheets-budget-template/
Hey, I’m trying to do this from my iPhone and I’m struggling at the Data Validation part as I can’t see the data selection tab, what do i do?
I do all the setup on a computer and only track expenses from my phone with the Google Sheets app. The app doesn’t look exactly the same as the spreadsheet on a computer.
I appreciate this. Instead of making a copy of the whole sheet for every month, will this work if i just add a new sheet for everyone month? I would rather have every month in one file and possibly add a savings sheet and end of year sheet letting me know when i went over budget as well as how much i actually saved. If anyone knows if this is possible while still using the same format please let me know. I do like this budget and the few edits you made, just not a fan of having 12 different files.
Yes! You can control+select both the Summary tab and the Transaction tab and then select duplicate. This will make it so the new set works independently from the original but still within the same document.
This is a great video. My only problem is my income doesn't automatically populate into the summary sheet the way the expenses do when I enter them into the transactions sheet. Is there a way to fix this?
Nevermind. I figured it out. Thanks.
So I needed to add more transactions than the originally designated number. I saw a pop up on the bottom that would add 1000 more lines. I didn't need that many but it did what I needed, or so I thought It's not transferring the data back to the summary on the first tab. Is there a formatting condition I need to change for it to extract that data so it will change it on the summary? When it added the extra lines, it kept the formatting as far as columns and the drop down menus to select where to apply the transaction but it's not reflecting on the summary page. Thoughts?
Did you follow the video exactly? I go over how to add the transactions and other changes that need to be made for it all to work. I have a written version here that may help: michaelsaves.com/budgeting/google-sheets-budget-template/
Thank you for your video! I had a question however on the "Fixed Expenses" tab/category. How do you keep track of each "actual" fixed expenses as they will vary sometimes?
I just check in with the Fixed Expenses worksheet before I make a copy every month and adjust as necessary with the best estimate possible. If you're worried about $5 here or there, you could keep those expenses on your main Summary page. I don't mind if Fixed Expenses are off by a few dollars. And categories with more extreme swings should always be on the main Summary page. As I stated in the video, my reasoning is to focus on those flexible expenses: groceries, eating out, entertainment, etc. Good luck!
@@MichaelSavesPlus Is there a way to "rollover" any money that is left in each category into the next month so you know what you actually have in each category rather than zeroing out each month?
@@jamesmabry2261 I'm not aware of any way to rollover amounts with formulas, but it may be possible. This video shows how I set up my budget, but there are a lot of different ways to budget. When I am under budget at the end of the month, I transfer that amount to savings. So $6,000 budgeted but spent $5,700 -- I would transfer $300 to savings. If you are under budget in a category and want to rollover an amount, you could always just manually add that when planning your spending the following month.
How to change the currency sign?
Video here: ua-cam.com/video/SKX7WaMos9M/v-deo.html
Can we change the formula to be more accurate to account for cents, not rounded to whole dollars?
I round to dollars, but I believe you can! Here's how: support.google.com/docs/answer/56470?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop
I watched your video long time ago. In that time I tried but didn't try hard enough. But when I am serious about it, it seems the template is not available for personal google accounts 😢. Do you have a copy to share?
EDIT: I found it on internet.
And thank you very much for your video from Bangladesh.
How can I change my currency in the template? It's in *£*
PS:- I just found your other video on changing the currency, nvm thanks for the tutorial
Does anyone have the blank budget template? My template in google got screwed up and thee formulas are not working.
Anyone know how to do the step at 5:10 on iphone? Nothing pops up for me to add additional rows.
I set it up on a computer for this very reason and others. Phone is only used for tracking.
I want to track and make a monthly budget but many of our expenses are paid annually. Also income varies by a lot sometimes. There are many expenses that are not purchased for years but are pretty big ticket items. These are the issues that holds me back. If I estimate what they would be if monthly then what happens when you have a surplus in that category and then the actual payment is made?
Here's how I handle irregular expenses: michaelsaves.com/save-money/google-sheets-budget-irregular-expenses/
Is there a way to do all this same steps on an apple phone? I am getting stuck at the data range
I set it up from a computer, then manage from my phone afterwards.