How to Make a Budget With Google Sheets

Creating a budget is essential for understanding where your money goes and managing your finances effectively.

Google Sheets offers a powerful and flexible platform for building and maintaining your personal budget. You can create your own free budget template in less than an hour. And by building your own budget, you’ll gain insights about your money mindset, and the financial goals important to you.

This guide will walk you through setting up an effective budget spreadsheet and provide advanced tips to maximize its usefulness.

Why Budgeting Matters

Effective budgeting helps you:

• Track your spending
• Save for future goals
• Reduce financial stress
• Gain insights about your money mindset
• Achieve your financial objectives

Getting Started

1. Open a new spreadsheet

1. Go to your Google Drive account (ensure you’re logged in)
2. Click New
3. Select Spreadsheet
4. Or, simply navigate to http://sheets.google.com and choose File > New
   

2. Use a template (optional)

• Google Sheets offers pre-made budget templates
• To access them, click Template Gallery when creating a new sheet
• Or browse our favorite 10 free Google Sheet budget templates

Tip: Templates can save time and provide a ready-made structure for your budget. Choose a template that closely aligns with your needs and customize it as necessary.

Setting Up Your Budget

1. Choose Your Budget Categories

Start by deciding on your budget categories. These typically include:

• Income: Salary, investments, side gigs, freelance work, etc.
• Expenses: Both fixed and variable, such as rent/mortgage, utilities, groceries, subscriptions.
• Transfers: Credit card payments, savings transfers, etc.
• Savings Goals: Emergency fund, vacation, retirement, etc.
• Debt Payments: Loans, credit cards.

Tip: Keep it simple to start—you can always add more detail later. Include both fixed expenses (like rent or mortgage) and variable expenses (like groceries or entertainment).

2. Decide on Your Budget Period

Choose whether you want to budget daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. Most people prefer monthly budgets for a clear overview, but you can set up multiple views if desired for more granular control.

• Monthly Budget: Ideal for regular paychecks and recurring bills.
• Weekly Budget: Helpful for tracking short-term goals or irregular income.
• Yearly Budget: Useful for long-term financial planning.

Regardless of the budget period, you’ll want to create three columns:

• A column for your budgeted income and expenses
• A column for actual income and expenses
• A column showing the difference between the two, so you can see a complete picture of your progress

Budget Period	Pros	Cons
Daily	Highly detailed, tracks small expenses	Can be time-consuming
Weekly	Balances detail with usability	May not capture monthly variations
Monthly	Easy to manage, aligns with most bills	Less detail for day-to-day expenses
Yearly	Great for long-term planning	Lacks short-term insights

3. Set Up Your Spreadsheet Structure

Create columns for:

• Budget Categories
• Budgeted Amounts
• Actual Amounts
• Difference Between Budgeted and Actual

Tip: Add a “Notes” column to capture specific details or unusual expenses that may need further explanation.

4: Use Simple Formulas to Save Time and Keep Organized

Manually summing cells is time-consuming, but Google Sheets makes it easy with formulas.

You can figure the difference between your budgeted and actual income and expenses by subtracting the cell containing the “actual” amount from the cell containing the “budget” amount.

You can also vertically sum all of your income and expense categories by using the SUM formula. For example, the SUM Function adds up all values in cells B2 through B6: =SUM(B2:B10)

Difference Calculation compares budgeted and actual amounts. For example, here B2 is the budgeted amount and C2 is the actual amount: =B2-C2

• Drag down the formula to apply it across all rows.
• Read more about using ChatGPT for budget formulas, and 5 Essential Google Sheets Formulas for Budgeting and Personal Finance
  

5. Input Your Budget Numbers

Use historical financial data as a starting point:

• Review past bank statements to see where your money typically goes.
• Set realistic goals based on your income and necessary expenses.
• Color-coding: Use different colors for income, fixed expenses, variable expenses, and savings goals to visually distinguish them.

6. Regularly Update Your Budget

Input your actual income and expenses as they occur. This allows you to track your progress and make adjustments as needed. Set a recurring reminder in Google Calendar to update your budget weekly or monthly.

Additional Tips for Google Spreadsheet Budgeting

Collaborate on Your Budget

Share your budget with a partner using Google Sheets’ sharing features. Manage access rights to keep your financial data secure.

Read “How to Share Google Sheets: Everything You Need to Know”

Use Conditional Formatting

• Conditional formatting can automatically highlight over-budget or under-budget categories visually.
• Select the range you want to format.
• Click Format > Conditional formatting.
• Set up rules (e.g., turn the cell red if over budget by more than 10%).
• Read more about conditional formatting from Google

Create Charts and Graphs

• Visualize your budget data for clearer insights.
• Select your data.
• Click Insert > Chart.
• Choose the chart type (e.g., bar chart for monthly expenses, pie chart for category breakdown) and customize as needed.
• Read more: How to Make Charts in Google Sheets

Use the QUERY Function

• Use SQL-like commands to analyze your data
• For example, this shows all entries from columns A and D where the value in D is greater than 100.
• =QUERY(A1:D100, "SELECT A, D WHERE D > 100", 1)

Protect Specific Cells or Ranges

• Prevent accidental changes.
• Select the cells you want to protect.
• Right-click and choose Protect range.
• Adjust permissions if the sheet is shared with others to ensure data security.

Use the GOOGLEFINANCE Function

It’s easy to track stocks and investments in Google Sheets with Google Finna

• Example: =GOOGLEFINANCE("TSLA") shows the current stock price for Tesla
• Read more about GOOGLEFINANCE

Import Data from Other Sheets

• Use the IMPORTRANGE function to pull data from other Google Sheets.cssCopy codeExample: =IMPORTRANGE("sheet_url", "sheet_name!A1:D10")

Bonus Tips

• Version History: Access old versions of your sheet via File > Version history. This feature is useful for tracking changes or reverting to previous versions.
• Offline Access: Download your sheet for offline use via File > Download
• Multiple Currencies: Format cells to display different currencies via Format > Number > More formats > More currencies.
• Emotion Tracking: Use emojis or custom icons to track your emotional response to spending in different categories.

Conclusion

The key to successful budgeting is consistency. Regularly update your spreadsheet and review your progress to stay on track with your financial goals.

By following this guide and utilizing these advanced features, you can create a powerful, customized budgeting tool in Google Sheets that will help you take control of your finances and achieve your financial goals.

Happy budgeting!