Hi everyone,
After years of lurking Reddit I've finally decided to join the community to share with everyone something that I've spent over 5 years and countless hours and updates to create for the purpose of tracking my daily spendings, recurring expenses and personal income. I wanted to get a strong grasp of my family's budget and spending habits so I started a google sheets file to track our daily expenses and income. The very first iteration was a simple google sheets file that we had to access every time I or my spouse made a purchase and we would have to spend at least an hour at the end of each month to reconcile all the expenses. Through several arguments and countless moments of frustration I came to realize that I couldn't expect my spouse to have the same level of attention to numerical details like myself. That inspired me to learn more about Google Sheets and some of its useful function to create this most recent iteration of our expense tracker. Now, all my spouse have to do is open the Google Forms link that is bookmarked to the home screen each time a transaction takes place and fill out the form and the sheet itself does the rest. No more arguments, no more reconciliation, just simple data entry via the attached Google Forms. Some features of our expense tracking sheet are:
- No need to make any edits to the actual Google Sheets (unless you want to personalize it with your own types of payments and categories)--- all data entry is done via the attached Google Forms.
- A full dashboard view to show: your most recent transactions within the last 7 days, a trend graph to show your expenses, income and savings overtime and a top ten merchants that you frequent and how much you actually spend on it to help you realize where your money is going to
- A summary sheet to show your running 12 months total by category with the current month highlighted for better focus
- A "bills paid" checkbox to keep track of whether or not you've paid your current month's monthly bill
- A "search" sheet to allow for you to find that specific item that you bought.
Simply Make a Copy (File --> Make a Copy) of the file and start using it as is or change the categories to best fit how you would use it. I am happy to share this with everyone since it has been a passion project of mine for over 5 years. I have learned so much useful ways to use google sheets that it has been the most rewarding experience of this entire journey. That and being able to get my spouse involved in tracking our expenses in an easy and simple way.
Link to the Google Sheet - Every Penny Counts
Happy tracking!
P.S. Please do a test entry from the Google Forms at least once to make sure your copy links properly. I've done a couple of test runs and some copies does not link the Google Forms to the Google Sheet itself after completing one entry. If that happens, just delete the file and make another copy.
EDIT: I've added a READ ME sheet to the file. Read it first to get an idea of how to use the file. This is intended for personal use and you guys are welcome to make any edits to your copy however you see fit. Enjoy.
Submitted July 18, 2019 at 08:33PM by I_Chart_For_Fun https://ift.tt/2YfmQK0
