Dig deeper into your spending for a selected category by reviewing the Transaction details over a configurable time period. See the sum of spending for all categories for a given date range.
How to Install
Quickly add a Category Tracker sheet to any Tiller-powered Google Sheet using the Tiller Community Solutions add-on.
@heather Any chance that a date column could be added to to this between columns C & D? When I run the report, it would be more helpful for it to also pull in the date of the transaction rather than just the transaction name and the amount.
I found a problem with the formula in the Category Tracker sheet.
The category summary for the period has in incorrect formula. Cell A7 should be =iferror(QUERY($G$7:$I$200,“SELECT G, H WHERE I<>‘Hide’ AND G<>’’ ORDER BY G ASC LABEL G ‘’, H ‘’”, -1),"") It is currently starting on $G$8, so the first category is skipped from the period summary.
I’m using the category tracker but have noticed that expenses that don’t have a “-” amount show as “$0.00”.
So I have purchased some clothes and returned them for a refund, however the refund just appears as “$0.00” in the category list of the category tracker which gives me a false total for my clothing budget.
I was not aware of this problem with Category Tracker but I have encountered problems elsewhere when recording negative expenses.
Workaround - Lets say you have a $100 purchase followed by a $10 return resulting in a $10 refund. I go back and split the $100 transaction into a $90 and $10 piece and code the $10 piece as a transfer and then code the $10 return/refund as a transfer too. The two $10 transactions net to zero and you are left with one $90 transaction which is what you want.
Thanks Blake. Not a bad work around, would like to find a more efficient way to report on negative expenses so that I can actually see what is a refund as opposed to viewing it as a transfer. Will give it a go and see how it goes.
You have lots of options. Set up a separate transfer category for each specific vendor you want to track. Put the refund to a special refund income category…thus $100 of expense and $10 of refund. It all depends on what you want to see and what works for you. You are only limited by your imagination.
Hi, I setup the category tracker and it seems to be breaking down expenses, but not income - is it supposed to be working like this or am I doing something wrong?
You mentioned it’s not showing income categories. Are you referring to the left side of the Category Tracker where it sums all the categories for the selected time period or the dropdown menu is not showing any of your income categories? A few things to double check
The configured time range includes income transactions
@heather,
No, I’m referring to the right side where it shows each of the transactions for a category in a period. For me it works for expenses, but not income. I confirmed that there is income for the period I’m looking at (Jan 2020) and the income categories are not marked as “hide”.
Any other suggestions?
So, when you click on cell E3, you only see expense categories but not income categories. Do your choices mirror your categories on the categories tab exactly? Do your choices go from A to Z or stop somewhere in the middle? Unhide the columns to the right. Is column J a list of your categories starting at cell J1 exactly as shown on your categories tab?
