Overview
Note: On August 1, 2023, we published a new template into the Foundation Template with this same name. This version of Spending Trends has been deprecated but we are still providing access as we know some users have come to appreciate it.
The Spending Trends sheet shows you your daily spending against your average daily spending for a customizable time period.
Installing the Spending Trends Sheet
- Copy the URL of your personal (destination) spreadsheet.
- Open the source template.
- Right click the
Spending Trendssheet and click theCopy tooption. - Paste the URL of your personal spreadsheet into the search bar.
- A new tab called “Spending Trends” should appear. Rename the template from Copy of Spending Trends to Spending Trends
- Enjoy.
How to use the Spending Trends sheet
Once you’ve added the Spending Trends sheet it should immediately begin working. There isn’t any additional configuration required, but there are some things you can do to customize the sheet.
Choosing the Time Period and Number of Periods
You can choose to review your average daily spending across weeks (starting on Sunday or Monday), months, quarters, or years.
You can choose how many periods you’d like to be displayed in the chart.
Change the Time Period setting using the dropdown menu.
Set the number of periods by typing directly into the light green cell next to Number of Periods.
You can adjust this at any time to review various time periods and get a sense of how your average daily spending is changing. After a time period is chosen and the number of periods is set, you’ll see the average daily spending per period amount, total spending in that period, and number of days in the period.
Below that you’ll see a chart that shows your spending for each day across the number of periods, and period type chosen, against your average for those periods.
Choosing a different chart type
If you’d rather see your daily spending against your average daily spending as a bar chart with a line you can edit the chart and change it to a combo chart.
There may be some other charts you can experiment with, but the line chart and the combo chart seem to work best.
Hiding the daily spending totals
If you don’t want to see the daily spending totals and data in the columns H, I, and J on this sheet you can select those columns by their column letter then right click and choose hide.
You’ll get a pop up that asks whether you want to include the hidden data in the chart, and you’ll need to click “include data” for the chart to continue to work with the columns hidden.
Troubleshooting
If you have a question or need help first search the community to see if someone has already asked and if not click here to quickly post a question about this template in the Google Sheets category.
Be sure to customize the title of your post with keywords about the issue or question so others can easily find the Q&A in search.