I’ve recently started to work on a solution for Google Sheets that will grant the ability to add and track budgets for multiple people! It’s a “Subcategories” workflow that allows you to add one or more subcategories to each category, much like @jpfieber’s Budget Plan.
I started building this workflow because I wanted to combine the Budget Plan with my Recurring Expenses workflow, while bringing another layer to the way that I organize my finances. While designing it out, I realized it could alternatively be used to split out and display finances for multiple people.
The basic concept is you would add two subcategories for each category, one for you and one for your partner. Then you would each add your individual budgets for a category to the proper subcategory instead. From there, those individual subcategory budgets would roll up into a single category budget in the Categories sheet (the current process to do this automatically through formulas slows things down significantly, so I’ve been trying to design a workaround to that).
Along with this new sheet, I’m reworking the following reports (and likely others) to display finances at the subcategory level:
- Monthly Budget (foundations report)
- Yearly Budget (foundations report)
- Spending Trends (foundations report)
- Quarterly Budget
- Live Profit & Loss Report
- Savings & Debt (what I can get to work, that is, since there’s a script part to this solution)
- Upcoming Recurring Expense/Account Health Dashboard
- Paycheck Expense Forecast
With the new reports, you will be able to view your budgets at a category level (combined budget) or a subcategory level (individual budgets). They would be broken out under the appropriate category item, like how the current report displays categories under groups. The category line will have the combined totals for all people, and the subcat line will have the individual budget, actual, and available amount per person.
Let me know if this solution interests anybody. I’m hoping to have it done in the next couple of weeks, but there’s a lot to work out, so can’t guarantee a deadline. It’s also a bit of a performance hog, but I feel the added value more than makes up for a slight lag here and there.