Excel Budget Workbook Dev

Hey all, so I’ve been developing a budgeting system in Excel for several years, off and on, giving up and my wife and I trying out basically every budgeting app in existence, only to finally make one in Excel that we actually like. I’m planning on sharing it here soon, but I’ve got a couple formulas I need to make sure actually work. Just looking for some feedback based on whatever tool you use. What charts, metrics, or displays do you feel are the most useful for visualizing your financial state? I’ve long struggled to marry together spending and auditing with planning, budgeting, and forecasting. Ideas include: category pie chart, cash flow over time, income vs expenses over time, Sankey diagram, calendar view with transactions for the month, spending this month vs last month, net worth over time, budget table for viewing the budget directly, and any others that aren’t coming to mind.

I don’t like any charts. Just a line graph for my net worth. I have my sheet set up as a table with my budget on my right and my spending per category per month next to it. I compare to make sure I’m in budget. Anytime I’ve added pie charts and such, I end up deleting them because I don’t need them and they add clutter.

I hear you on that. My wife and I primarily use a cash flow chart that we often view on the mobile version of Excel. It essentially has a blue line for income, an orange line for spending, and a grey line for the cash flow, set to whatever time period we choose. I also have a box you can check that displays the expenses as positive, so you can compare income and spending directly. Not sure if you think you would find that useful or not, but that’s really our main one outside of the net worth line chart.

I think a calendar view is super helpful. It lets you see your transactions in a monthly layout, which makes it easy to track when you spend the most.

Beckett said:
I think a calendar view is super helpful. It lets you see your transactions in a monthly layout, which makes it easy to track when you spend the most.

That sounds cool. Do you use color coding for different categories?

@Zia
Yeah, I do. It makes it easier to spot where I’m overspending.

A net worth tracker over time is pretty essential for me. It gives a good overview of how my finances are growing or shrinking.

I like having a budget table that shows the budget directly alongside the actual spending. It makes it easier to see where I’m at.