If budgeting and expenses stress you out – I got you! There are tons of monthly expense Excel templates and other Excel templates available on Microsoft Create. Choose one that catches your eye, I really liked this monthly family budget template to start with. It not only tracks my monthly expenses and income, but it also creates a fun Cash Flow chart so we can easily see the cash coming in and the cash going out.
Here are a few ways I’d suggest customizing this spreadsheet to make tracking your money even easier.
Add rows for income streams
On the Monthly Income tab, I like to add in additional rows of income streams by clicking on a row label and then using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Shift + Plus (on a PC) or Option + Shift + Return (on a Mac). That way we can keep our income streams organized in the Excel expense tracker.
Use a chart to make expenses easier to track
On the Monthly Expenses tab, I also like to see a breakdown of my expenses in chart form. To do this, I highlight the monthly expenses list plus the actual list, select Insert, then select a chart option to find a nice way to visualize my data. I’ll pick a bar chart to use here. I also like to sort using the "Actual" column to rearrange my chart, and then switch up the title too.
I hope you found these Excel expense tracking tips helpful. You can check out more free expense tracker templates on Microsoft Create.