Track your expenses the easy way with Excel

Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Budgeting > Track your expenses the easy way with Excel

March 24, 2023

Through customizable spreadsheets, Microsoft Excel makes it easy to create an expense tracker that fits all your needs. Whether you’re modifying a template or starting from scratch, here are some elements to consider in your expense tracking spreadsheet.

Track your expenses the easy way with Excel – Microsoft 365 (1)

Use an Excel tracker template

Microsoft 365 offers thousands of premium and professional templates for Excel, including one for a personal monthly budget. Designed to be clear and concise, it covers all the basic expenses a household might pay for in an average month.

Track your expenses the easy way with Excel – Microsoft 365 (2)

Effortlessly track expenses with Excel

Manage your finances with this free expense tracker template

Go to Excel

The fundamental questions you want to be able to answer with a quick glimpse are, “What did I spend my money on, and how much did I spend?” Spreadsheet software like Excel is ideal for displaying this information in rows and columns. These can be ranked into categories.

Important categories in your personal budget

For the average household, expense trackers usually contain the following:

Housing: mortgage payments, home repairs, homeowners’ insurance, and property taxes.
Transportation: auto loans, public transit fare, car maintenance and repairs.
Utilities: gas, water, heat, electricity, and Internet.
Entertainment: streaming subscriptions, video games, live shows, upcoming vacations and weekend getaways.
Emergency savings: Create an emergency savings fund and be prepared for anything.
Goals: Something you might be saving for in the long term, whether it’s a new car, an appliance upgrade, or sending a child to college.

In an Excel template, you can create new sheets for each of these major categories, then break them down to specific expenses.

For example, create a new sheet, name it Housing, and then dedicate a column to the expenses that fall under this category (monthly mortgage payments, anticipated home repairs, etc.). Your rows can be tied to the months in this year where you’re anticipated to make monthly payments or save for major repairs.

You can estimate how much you’ll pay per month for utilities, or if you know that you have a fixed rate for mortgages and loans, you can fill in the blanks ahead of time.

Business expenses to consider for your monthly tracker

If you own a small business, you’ll have expenditures in different categories to record. Some of the most common categories for business expenses include:

Supplier costs
Work travel (broken down to lodging, meals, etc.)
Office supplies
Workplace rent
Employee insurance and benefits
Business loans

Business-focused templates are available for Excel, especially specific ones that keep track of your bill payments, general ledgers, or even expense reports for startups.

By tracking your expenses for your business in a spreadsheet, you can also identify potential sources for fraud, such as monetary discrepancies for yourself and others. And when tax season rolls around, you have a convenient document to draw from, instead of hunting down receipts to present to your tax preparer.

Of course, a properly calculated budget doesn’t just happen overnight. Check out more budgeting advice, tips and tricks so you can make the most out of your money.