Expense Tracker Spreadsheet
This is a spreadsheet that will help you to track your expenses. You can use it to determine how much money you are spending, what you are spending your money on, and what you use to spend your money.
Download link: expense_tracker.xls
Update (3 May 2009): Because this simple spreadsheet is so popular, I’ve decided to also make its big-brother available for download. If you’re looking for a more powerful spreadsheet, you may want to check out the Budget Planner Excel Spreadsheet.
What can I use the Expense Tracker Spreadsheet for?
If you want to create a budget for yourself, you can use the spreadsheet to do an initial assessment of your spending habits, so you’ll know the amounts you need to budget for each expense.
If you do not want to create a budget, but you suspect that you are spending a lot of money on meaningless things, you can use the spreadsheet to identify problem areas in your spending habits, by recording all your expenses for a month or two and seeing where you should cut down.
Instructions
You’ll find three tab-sheets in the Expense Tracker Spreadsheet:
- Setup
- Expenses
- Summary
To use the Expense Tracker Spreadsheet:
- On the Setup tab-sheet
Define your expense categories and payment accounts (e.g. current-account, credit-card, cash, etc.) - On the Expenses tab-sheet
Record all your expenses. You need to specify a description, date, and amount, and also select the expense category and payment account from the drop-down lists, for each expense. - On the Summary tab-sheet
View a summary of your expenses. You just need to fill in the start and end dates for the summary.
If you find any problems with the spreadsheet, or you need help, please let me know.
I modified it from the budget spreadsheet I’ve been using for years, so I don’t think there’ll too be many issues.
September 13th, 2008 at 03:19 am
Thanks for sharing the spreadsheet, francois. I use an excel spreadsheet to plan my budget, but I did not have an efficient method of tracking my actual expenditures. This one looks like it will work for me.
September 13th, 2008 at 07:41 am
Thanks for visitng my blog.
I am definitely going to use this. Thanks a million. If you read a bit of my blog, saying we’re in financial poof is a bit of an understatement.
Have a super weekend.
Michelle
aka Lunatic Mom
September 13th, 2008 at 01:38 pm
@rtc:
It’s a big pleasure!!
@Michelle:
Aaaah, it’s the Lunatic Mom!
I just stumbled across your blog yesterday. I saw you were trying to sell your house and that you were having trouble with that, but haven’t read enough to notice more.
I hope you’ll manage to sell your house and get ahead with your finances again soon!!
September 14th, 2008 at 02:05 pm
Gotta love Excel! Looks like a great spreadsheet. We have been looking more at where our money goes too since we have had insurance woes. This will be a great tool to help us do that.
Thanks Francois!
September 15th, 2008 at 08:44 am
Hi Francois
Ek het ook vir baie lank iets soortgelyk gebruik. Dit is ‘n baie goeie stuk gereedskap om dissipliene aan te leer en ook soos jy noem, ondersoek in te stel waar die fout lê.
April 12th, 2009 at 09:56 am
Francois,
This one is really a great tool to keep track the expenses. Thanks for sharing
September 7th, 2009 at 04:37 am
Is there anyway to sort the expenses by date using the Excel sort feature once I’ve entered them? I am trying to reconcile my expenses from receipts against my credit card statement and it would be helpful if I could sort by date by I am not given that option at all when I select the range of dates and click on the Data tab. The ability to sort anything is grayed out. I am using Excel 2007 if that makes a difference. Is it because the sheet is protected that I am unable to sort? Thanks for any help that might be offered. It is a great worksheet but not being able to sort at the moment is making it a lot tougher to use.
September 7th, 2009 at 04:08 am
Well, I copy and pasted the data and table into another blank work book and was able to sort it as I wanted to so that is a workaround solution. It might be helpful to find a way to add in that feature built into the spreadsheet itself if possible without having to copy and paste it into a new blank worksheet.
September 7th, 2009 at 09:52 am
@Taylor
I’ve run into the same problem as you (having to sort the expenses after entering them) a couple of times.
I think the sheet protection that prevents you from accidentally modifying formulas is also preventing you from sorting data – it’s a pity.
The method you used is exactly the way I got around it – by copying the data to another sheet, sorting it there and then pasting it back.
When you paste the sorted data back to the original spreadsheet you must remember to use “paste special” and only select strings, values and dates (not formats or formulas).