šŸ† Budget Plan - Google Sheets

It simplifies things down to show the end result of ā€œhow much do I have availableā€. If you want to see the details, expand the sections (eg. the + above column N) and youā€™ll get budget and current numbers.

Thanks for your super quick response - I appreciate it! I think Iā€™m missing something because I donā€™t see anything suggesting an expanded view or more. Granted I havenā€™t gone far at all in setting up the budget.

Oh, sorry, was thinking you were asking about Budget Status. Budget Plan is just about planning your budget, it doesnā€™t do anything with actuals (beyond pulling them in from the past if you choose that option). To compare your budget with your actuals, youā€™d need to then use something like ā€œMonthly Budgetā€, ā€œSavings Budgetā€ or ā€œBudget Statusā€.

Are any of those integrated with Budget Plan - meaning I can view the budgeted vs actual per month?

Iā€™m familiar with Monthly Budget and I see Savings Budget, but I canā€™t find ā€œBudget Statusā€. Thanks

I found the Budget Status I think

Any budgeting tool should look to the Categories sheet for itā€™s budget info, which is why part of the setup for Budget Plan includes copying a special formula to the Categories sheet. You can fine Budget Status here.

Love the tool that youā€™ve created and have been working this past week to get it ready for 2023. I have a question that I searched for but canā€™t tell if itā€™s been discussed already:

I do freelance work where the income in the year is variable (dependent on how many clients I can land in a month) and the payment arrives at the start and end of the work (typically 3 months apart). I can use Past-Category or Past-Category-AVG to generally plan the coming year based on when I landed clients the previous year. However, is there a way for me to change the budget during the year? For example, if in Feb 2023 I realize Iā€™m going to land more clients than I had in Feb 2022, can I update the Budget Plan somehow to reflect that the payments that come in May 2023 will be higher?

I canā€™t think of a simple way of doing this without creating something incredibly complex, like multiple rows, one for each month of 2023ā€¦

If you use one of the ā€˜pastā€™ frequencies, you could always add a multiplier on it to increase the numbers. For example, if you start out just using ā€œPast-Categoryā€ and then realize youā€™re income is going to be higher than it was last year, try to estimate by how much it will be higher. If it will be 10% higher, add a 1.1 multiplier. If 25% higher, add a 1.25 multiplier.
You could also use multiple rows with start and end dates and each could have whatever frequency and multiplier makes the most sense.

@faisal Iā€™d recommend looking into using the ExternalSource option. I am personally using this for items that fluctuate from month to month throughout the year (Electric and Gas for home). This allows you to create your budget category different from one month to the other as different parts of the year one will be higher than the other, etc.

This would allow you to adjust as well when needed pretty easily. There are some items above from myself and another who used the ExternalSource but I know @jpfieber did mention he was going to try to create some examples after the holidays of this feature. Itā€™s a thought that may help you with what you are looking to do.

1 Like

Any idea what I could have done wrong that the numbers stay 0.00 when selecting past-category?

Make sure you have a category chosen, and that you have transactions in that category from a year ago.

I selected a category that has transactions and still doesnā€™t show up amount on budget sheet.

If you expand the + above column AE, do you see a letter in AJ1? Thats where Budget Plan looks to see what column your categories are in on the Transactions sheet. If that looks correct, Iā€™d go to your Transactions sheet and use the Filter tool to filter down one of the months from last year where youā€™re expecting to get numbers from to ensure there are actually transactions during that period for that category. Itā€™s happened before where someone thought they had transactions, but then realized they were categorized differently than they thought, or didnā€™t realize the transactions didnā€™t start until a later date.

Sorry, but Iā€™m not sure I understand what you mean with the below. Can you explain a little more.
ā€œIf you expand the + above column AE, do you see a letter in AJ1? ā€œ

In the Budget Plan sheet, if you look at the column headers, scroll over until you see a column labeled ā€˜AEā€™. Above the letters ā€˜AEā€™ you should see a ā€˜+ā€™ symbol. If you click on it, it should expand and show you a bunch of hidden columns, one of which is ā€˜AJā€™. In the first row of column AJ should be a letter (in my case it says ā€˜Dā€™). Does yours show you a letter, and then to the right of it, it should show something like 'Transactions'!$D$2:$D?

Yes. It does show by me. Thanks for explaining that. I confirmed to have transactions of the category and it still doesnā€™t bring any numbers to the budget plan.
I appreciate your help with this.

If you want to share your sheet with me (send a direct message) I can try to troubleshoot, otherwise, not sure what else to suggest looking at.

Iā€™m trying to sort by importance, but every way I do it seems to break the other formulas. Any recommendations for how to sort without a result of #REF all over the sheet? Thanks in advance! This budget is a great help as I set up for 2023!

1 Like

How can I message you directly?

Where you see my picture and name on the left side of this message, click on ā€˜jpfieberā€™ and a window will open, click on ā€˜Messageā€™ and it will open a window to compose a message directly to me instead of to this post.