Google Sheets Budget Template — One Log, No Monthly Tabs (Full Tour), by MMO on YouTube. 3 min 30 s.
- Video length
- 3 min 30 s
- Time to do it
- 30 minutes
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Steps
- 8
What you need
Steps
Open a blank Google Sheet and add a Setup tab. Enter your monthly income, your payday dates, and your own category and account lists in one column each.
Create a Category Budgets tab with one row per category and a monthly limit column. Add a check cell that turns red when your limits add up to more than your income.
Make a Recurring Bills tab. For each bill, enter the amount and how often it bills, then divide the yearly total by 12 to get the true monthly cost.
Add a Transaction Log tab with columns for date, category, account, description and amount. Leave room for about 400 rows for the year.
Build a Monthly Dashboard tab with a dropdown of the twelve months. Use SUMIFS formulas that read the chosen month from that dropdown and pull totals from the Transaction Log.
Add an Annual Dashboard tab with twelve month columns side by side, so you can compare each month against your category limits.
Create a Debt Payoff tab with balance, interest rate and monthly payment columns. Add a formula that returns the payoff date, and a Savings Goals tab that shows the monthly amount each goal needs.
Log every transaction in the Transaction Log as it happens. Pick a month in the dropdown and check the dashboard against your bank statement.
Tips and common mistakes
Divide every non-monthly bill by 12 before budgeting, so a 612 dollar insurance bill counts as 102 dollars a month.
Keep one log for the whole year instead of duplicating tabs, since copied tabs drift out of sync fast.
Lock the Setup and formula cells with Data then Protect range so a stray keystroke does not break the dashboard.
Log transactions the same day you spend, or the dashboard numbers stop matching your bank balance.
Questions
Can I do this in Excel instead of Google Sheets?
Yes. The same layout and SUMIFS formulas work in Excel 2016 and later, though dropdowns are set up through Data Validation rather than Google Sheets menus.
Do I need to know formulas to build this?
A little. The core is SUMIFS, which adds amounts from the log when the date falls in the chosen month and the category matches. Copy one working formula to the other cells.
How many transactions can the log hold?
The template uses 400 rows, which covers most people for a year. Add more rows if you log small daily purchases.
This guide was drafted from the video's details and general task knowledge. It has not been checked against the full video. Check the video and relevant product instructions before following a procedure. Report a correction.
