Everyone needs to budget. Keeping track of your finances is a must – good financial control will ensure you’re not caught with your financial pants down… However, more importantly is a way to keep track of your budget and how you’re performing in line with it. An Excel budget worksheet (or Google Sheets) template is the most common, due it’s ability to be so customisable and user friendly. That said, many people don’t know where to start.
Hopefully I can help…
Clear Structure
This may sound obvious, but it’s a common mistake I see. What is the purpose of your budget? What type of spend? Personal or business? A top down approach is the best way; as we do in the finance industry.
For income and expenses, I like to have my budgeted earnings/revenues as the first lines (like an income statement/profit and loss structure) in my Excel budget sheet.
I follow this with the clear categories of expenses, which are then itemised. Use your subjectivity here – how much level of detail do you want?
Budget Figures
This may require some thought. It may seem easy to just pull last month/year/period’s figures and use those… But were those spends actually what you wanted to achieve, or were those in excess of your earnings/income? Were they adequately controlled and managed? If you’re here getting the advice on how to prepare a budget, then I’d guess not…
A good starting point would be to use these aforementioned numbers, and allocate them into the structure you’ve identified above. Then it’s time to do some honest analysis; should these spends be this high; should I have been spending on this or that; can I reduce some expenses or cut back?
Actuals
So you’ve sprayed your hard earned cash about and racked up the spending. Household necessities, personal spending, holidays etc. Now comes the part of getting the actuals analysed against your budget. These days there are tools available to try and track these things for you by linking to your bank/prepaid cards. However, I still find none of them are as flexible or maleable as using an Excel budget spreadsheet.
The only tricky point can be getting the data qucikly and efficiently into your budget model. This is where I would use a separate sheet to download the data to. Most banks and credit card companies will have teh functionality for you to download your transactions to Excel. This then makes it very easy to copy across to your budget planner and keep a running record within it.
This is where I’d strongly suggest using a separate sheet, to ensure your budget doesn’t get clogged up with the source data, and rather create a link from the source data to the budget. This is something I will cover in more detail in a future post.
What about those “forgotten” items
So you’ve got your earnings and expenses tabled and analysed, but have you missed anything? Do you have a specific savings goal? Do you want to invest a portion of your earnings? Have you accounted for any deductions for taxes (e.g. self assessment in UK).
Some of these things are often forgotten and it pays (no pun intended) to have visibility of these from the get-go in your Excel budget planner.
You may need to revisit some of your outgoings in order to ensure that you’re metting your savings/investment goals. Or to make sure you’re not running around last minute to find funds to pay your tax bill. Keeping a clear view of these items also ensures you give your outgoings and expenses carful consideration. Should you be cutting back on other frivilous expenses rather to make sure you have sufficient money to save/invest?
Conclusion
Your budget can be as easy or as difficult as you make it. However, there is always a level of effort and discipline involved. Regardless, the real cost of not budgeting or controlling your finances can be bigger than you think, so don’t neglect it.
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