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Budget & Expense Tracker Template

This Excel workbook helps you plan a yearly budget, record income and expenses, and see how actual spending compares with your plan. Everything calculates automatically; you only type into the yellow cells. Getting started (5 minutes): Setup sheet: Enter your budget year, opening balance, and the month you’re reporting through. Optionally set a savings rate target. Budget sheet: Rename the income and expense categories if needed and enter your planned amount for each month. The figures shown are samples, so replace them with your own. Day-to-day use: 3. Income Log: Record each payment you receive (date, source, description, amount). 4. Expense Log: Record each expense (date, category, description, payment method, amount). Choose categories from the drop-down lists, and enter all amounts as positive numbers. Row 6 on each log is an example entry; overwrite it. Reviewing your results (automatic): Dashboard: Year-to-date income, expenses, net savings, current balance, savings rate and budget variance, with charts. Monthly Summary: Budget vs actual income and expenses for each month, plus opening, closing and projected balances. Category Variance: Year-to-date budget vs actual for each category, with status flags (Over budget, On track, Under budget). Actuals: Monthly totals pulled from your logs. Good to know: Do not type over the Actuals, Monthly Summary, Category Variance, or Dashboard sheets, as they contain formulas. Positive variances (green) are favourable, and negative variances (red) are unfavourable. Each log holds 500 entries. Entries dated outside the budget year, or using a category that isn’t on the Budget sheet, are not counted. The Data Check on the Monthly Summary sheet will flag this. Update the “Report through month” on the Setup sheet each month to refresh the year-to-date figures.