#FAMILY BUDGET PLANNING TEMPLATE HOW TO#
#FAMILY BUDGET PLANNING TEMPLATE UPDATE#

Instead, you create an account called 'Vacation' or 'Car' in the Accounts tab of the money management template. One of the simple ways to do that is to create something called a 'Virtual Sub-Account' which means that you aren't actually creating a real sub-account with your bank. If you are saving up for a vacation, car purchase, down payment, or some other future goal you may want to keep track of how much money in your savings account is allocated to those specific goals. Creating Virtual Sub-Accounts to Track Goals If you want that kind of functionality, you may want to use some other dedicated budget software.

There is no online connectivity built into the money manager. I also have no plans in the future to add the ability to automatically import transactions from your bank or other financial institution. The money management template is not quite that fancy. You may find it convenient to use filtering to display transactions for a single Account at a time when you are reconciling.Ĭan I import transactions from my bank? Unfortunately, no. First select the entire transactions table and then turn on Autofilter. You can also create a subset of rows to use for copying/pasting with the amounts left blank (so that these template rows don't affect the account balances).Ĭan I use Autofiltering? Yes. It is very important that you always copy entire rows (instead of inserting blank rows) so that you preserve the formatting, data validation, and formulas that are both visible and contained in hidden columns.įor recurring bills, you can copy the rows for older transactions, then insert the copied rows and change the dates and amounts.

#FAMILY BUDGET PLANNING TEMPLATE HOW TO#

If you have a good understanding of how to copy, insert, and delete rows, it should be a piece of cake. The second most difficult part of using the money management template is learning to enter transactions into the Transaction worksheet correctly and efficiently. I've tried very hard to include a comprehensive set of income and expense categories, so if customizing the categories is too scary, just try to use the default list. The conditional formatting just highlights the categories not within the main list. I've added conditional formatting to help prevent these types of mistakes, but the spreadsheet is definitely not error-proof. What you need to watch out for: If you assign a transaction to a category that is not included in the Budget or Report worksheets, the expense won't show up in your reports and you'll think you have more money than you really do. Video Tutorial (Customizing Budget Categories) Essentially, you just need to make sure that the categories are exactly the same in all worksheets. Luckily, you only need to do this once with maybe a bit of tweaking each year. The most complicated part of using the old version is customizing the budget categories. The new version of the money manager is easier to customize, but many people still prefer the original version because it groups the expenses into separate categories.

#FAMILY BUDGET PLANNING TEMPLATE UPDATE#

Update (XLSX version only): Added a new Goals worksheet that you can use for tracking the balance of various savings and expense funds. For example, tags would allow you to filter or search for specific expenses that might cross over multiple categories, such as a #CAR1 or #CAR2 tag for tracking expenses associated with a specific vehicle. A new 'Tags' column was added to the Transactions worksheet to let you add your own unique tags as needed. Update (XLSX version only): A separate 'Accounts' worksheet was added for editing the list of accounts and summarizing the balances in each account. It includes the transactions and the weekly report all on one worksheet.

We've created a Weekly Budget template that is based on the money manager. This may be helpful for creating the following year's budget. Track Your Yearly Spending - Due to frequent requests for a yearly report, I have added a new worksheet that calculates an Income & Expense Report for an entire year grouped by month. Just change the Year and Month to view the report for a different month. actual amounts, and is updated automatically as you enter transactions. Track Your Monthly Spending using the monthly budget report which includes graphs, compares budget vs.

Family budget planning template