Foundation Template Monthly Budget Dashboard Broken

Continuing the discussion from Tiller Budget (via Tiller Add-on) Comprehensive Guide:

Im using the foundation template spreadsheet and have everything set up nicely. As of a few days ago, the monthly and yearly budgets were population quite well. Now, the budget columns have the amounts populated, but all the actual expenses show as zero. Not sure what happened. Did a restore and that did not fix it.

@howard.siegal, can you please check the Transactions sheet and make sure that the word “Category” is in the header row (row 1) usually column D?

If not, add it there. If that doesn’t help, do you see any errors on the budget dashboard?

Usually when a dashboard shows errors or stops pulling data the common causes are:

  1. Missing header row the dashboard is dependent on (usual suspects are Date (B1), Description (C1), or Category (D1) in the Transactions sheet and Category (A1) on the Categories sheet).
  2. A direct edit to the dashboard (usually visualization only) has broken a formula that’s filling the cells based on data in another sheet (e.g. Monthly Budget pulls from Transactions/Categories). If there is a direct entry in one of those cells needed by the formula to output the results it breaks and you see #REF.

Let me know if any of that is helpful.

Heather

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@Heather, does this mean that if I try to freeze columns A-D on the Category sheet so I can just slide the months back and forth, the freezing will break the formula that fills in Transactions and Monthly Budget? IS there a way to do the freeze I describe without breaking anything? It’s challenging to fill in the monthly budgets on the categories page when I need the category amounts to be different by monthly.

Hi @Blossom - I think the freezing should be fine and should not break anything with the dashboard. You can always give it a try and then undo (Edit menu at top of Google Sheet) if it breaks anything.