Skip to content

All About Planners

Printable planners to organize your home, business and life!

Menu
  • Home
  • Planning
    • Blog post index
    • New to planning? Start here
    • Planning Tips & Inspiration
      • Planning with Highlighters
      • Planner Newbie
      • Planner pens
    • 52 Planning Systems in 52 Weeks
    • Planner Reviews
      • Planner Comparisons
      • Happy Planner (MAMBI)
      • Horizontal Weekly
      • Horizontal 1 Page Weekly + Notes
      • Categories Weekly
      • Hourly Planners
      • Budget Planners
      • Daily Planners
      • Student Planners
      • Discbound Planners
      • Planner Roundups
    • Resources & Tools I Recommend
    • Rachael’s Favorites
    • Bullet Journal
      • Bullet Journal Reviews
      • 160GSM Dot Grid Notebook Reviews
      • Bullet Journal Spreads
      • Bullet Journal Tips
    • Digital Planning
    • Stationery Shopping
    • Recipe Organisation
  • FREE Printables
    • FREE Printables
    • Free Printables Library – Subscribers Login
  • Graphic Design
    • Affinity Publisher
    • Photoshop Tutorials
    • Microsoft Word
    • Microsoft Excel
    • Silhouette Studio
    • Canva
  • Learn
    • ECOURSES
      • Printables in Affinity Publisher
      • How to Make Planner Stickers
      • How to Make Printables
      • Digital planners and notebooks in Microsoft PowerPoint
      • How to Make Labels in Photoshop
      • Printables in Microsoft Excel
      • Printables in Microsoft Word
      • How to Write Product Descriptions
      • Learn How to Make Printables
      • Free Graphic Design Video Tutorials Library
      • Make Patterns in Photoshop
      • Party Printables
      • Ecourse Bundles
    • Ebooks
      • 1200 Blog Post Ideas (Exclusive Download Content)
      • 200 Blog Post Title Prompts (Exclusive Download Content)
      • 54 Mistakes Etsy Sellers Make (And How to Fix Them)
      • 200 Blog Post Title Prompts (For Any Type of Blog)
      • 1200 Blog Post Ideas
    • Blogging & Online Business
  • SHOP
    • My online store
    • My Etsy store
    • Shop my favorite planner supplies on Amazon
    • Planner Supplies (my sister’s shop!)
  • FAQ
    • About
    • Downloading Files
    • How to Open Zipped File Folders
    • Printing Tips
    • What does EDITABLE mean?
    • Printable Planner Stickers
    • Why printables? Do you sell printed versions of your products?
    • What is a Printable? What happens when I purchase a printable from you?
    • I’ve purchased printables from you – how should I set up my planner?
    • Feedback & Testimonials
    • Disclaimer and Privacy Policy
  • Travel
    • Australia & New Zealand
    • Japan
    • Europe
    • Itineraries
Menu
family budgeting spreadsheets rainbow color coded expenses breakdown by month automatic formulas excel spreadsheets

Why I Switched from paper to Excel spreadsheets for budgeting

Posted on September 3, 2019March 17, 2021 by Rachael

I faithfully used paper for budgeting for many years. I enjoyed using planner stickers and colored pens… but I outgrew it a few years ago, switched to Excel and haven’t looked back!

I did a post back in 2017 about my reasons for the switch and various methods you could use for digital budgeting. But the method that I’ve been using and that I’m sticking to is Excel.

Why I switched to using Excel for budgeting

  • Formulas automatically calculate – much quicker than manually adding things up with a calculator
  • I can track ALL of my finances in the one place (income, expenses, debt, savings, investments), rather than scattered across multiple pages (previously I was using a monthly calendar, bill tracker, savings tracker etc.)
  • Don’t need to re-write the same things each month
  • More room to write – you can make the columns and rows as wide as you want
  • My handwriting can be messy – in Excel it’s much neater and there’s many different fonts to choose from
  • While I can’t use planner stickers and colored pens in Excel, I can use different colored text and shade the cells in different colors
  • Excel automatically creates graphs – ideal if you’re a visual person
  • Quicker and easier to color code
  • Yourself and your partner can easily access the spreadsheet to keep it updated
  • If you and your partner both want to update the spreadsheet on the go, you can both access it via Google Sheets (which is a free online tool)
  • Easier to forecast budget versus actual
  • Easier to pinpoint what areas you’re over budget (I set up my spreadsheets so that the numbers automatically turn red if I’ve gone over budget)
  • Can go into plenty of detail and keep it on the same spreadsheet (can zoom in and out in Excel whereas on paper you’re limited by how big you write and how big the piece of paper is)
  • Quick to update and formulas will automatically update too
  • Can save onto an external harddrive to quickly backup – don’t need to take photos of paper budgets / records for tax records
  • Don’t need to store paper

I explain more about why I switched to Excel and show some of the reasons in the video below:

To enlarge the screen of the video, click the square icon in the bottom right hand corner of the video (it will say ‘full screen’ when you hover your mouse over the icon).

Subscribe to my YouTube channel for more planner videos!

Personal Budgeting Spreadsheets

These are the spreadsheets I use for myself. I don’t have a partner or kids so these simple spreadsheets are perfect for my needs!

 

budgeting spreadsheets income expenses tracking family budget spending log editable worksheets monthly excel google docs-min

budget planner excel savings expenses income graph tracker

If you’d like to try these spreadsheets, there are 9 colors to choose from in my shop:

  • Light Blue
  • Dark Blue
  • Red
  • Black
  • Orange
  • Pink
  • Purple
  • Green
  • Mint

If you can’t decide on a color I’ve put them together in this bundle:

Family Budgeting Spreadsheets

I created these for anyone that has kids. With more people there’s obviously more expenses to track so I added an expenses breakdown tab. The rest of the spreadsheets are the same as my personal budgeting spreadsheets.

family budgeting spreadsheets for microsoft excel google sheets or numbers simple easy to use track income and expenses

I also made a rainbow version if you like color coding 🙂

family budgeting spreadsheets rainbow color coded expenses breakdown by month automatic formulas excel spreadsheets

simple family budget spreadsheet monthly household spending income expenses tracker color coded budget versus actual excel

family budget monthly expense breakdown budget actual difference automatic formulas excel spreadsheet simple easy to use download

Purchase the family budgeting spreadsheets here. Rainbow version available here,

Want to learn how to make your own pretty spreadsheets in Excel? Click here!

how to make printables in excel weekly planner monthly budgeting spreadsheets monthly calendar video tutorials ecourse all about planners

budgeting why i switched from paper to excel digital microsoft how to make pretty spreadsheets quick simple spreadsheet template

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Related

Continue Reading

Next Post:
Pen and paper versus digital: which is better for keeping track of your money?
Previous Post:
The 3 things I plan digitally instead of using pen and paper

1 thought on “Why I Switched from paper to Excel spreadsheets for budgeting”

  1. MaryAnn Coy says:
    September 4, 2019 at 11:38

    Another asset of Excel Spread Sheets is that they can be saved to your Cloud Server. No matter what happens, you can access and download a copy of the last saved version of your spreadsheet. I have had this help me twice, with a large, complex spreadsheet I keep full of vital medical information for my treatment team. Even if your computer is stolen & you wipe it, or it falls in the ocean or burns in a fire, your information is still safe & you can get it back. I do like Excel for it’s ability to track a big picture. Whether it’s vital information or complex financials, it tracks everything, and as you said, can create an incredible range of financial reports, very rapidly. Budgets in hard copy were what I learned in school & it takes a long time and in my day an adding machine to create and fill out all those reports by hand. Calculators came out when I was in College, & made the process much easier. The PC wasn’t created until I was in my mid forties, then came Excel and basic bookkeeping was revolutionized. I can’t sometimes believe how much faster & easier it is now. We can even do taxes on the computer and Excel has all the necessary figures. Plus all the backup is easily saved. You never have to fill out all those extra copies by hand, or even spend time at a copy machine. You can save on a personal drive, a company drive, or into a cloud server. The world of finance is so much faster now. For young people who never had to do all of this by hand on paper, it must be hard to conceive the amount of paper, and hours of work, they don’t have to do. You can even get source documents on line, we used to have to write, request and pay for. Unless someone has the most basic financials, it makes little sense to do it by hand, except as a General learning experience. Thanks for your good and as always practical article on why Excel makes sense for tracking financials.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Hello

Welcome to All About Planners! I’m Rachael, a 20-something Australian planner addict. On the blog you’ll find more than 1,000 posts about all things planning including planner reviews, tips, favorite supplies and some of my past weekly spreads.

Subscribe and join 60,000+ others on the quest to find planner peace!

If you have a question or there is a planner you’d like me to review, I can be contacted via [email protected]

Subscribe

free printables library sign up all about planners blog image graphic subscribe

Search

Shop At Etsy

The photos and content on this site are the property of All About Planners. They are not allowed to be used without permission from All About Planners.

Categories

Recent Posts

  • ZenArt Bullet Journal Notebook review (7′ wide x 10″ high notebook)
  • Using ChatGPT to create a travel itinerary – time saver or waste of time?
  • What dot grid size is best for bullet journaling?
  • The best budgeting sticker books for your planner or bullet journal
  • Archer and Olive versus Notebook Therapy: Which Dot Grid Notebook is better?

Follow Me

  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • YouTube

Disclaimer

All About Planners is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Printables

  • Learn How to Make Printables
  • How to Make Planner Stickers
  • Resources & Tools I Recommend

Follow Me

  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • YouTube
Privacy
©2023 All About Planners | Built using WordPress and Responsive Blogily theme by Superb