If you’re here, you’ve probably just picked up our 50/30/20 budgeting sheet. If you haven’t you can get it here. This post is a complete guide to using the budget to manage your monthly finances.
If your finances have got out of control, this is the first step to getting them on the right track. Creating a budget allows you to plan where you spend your money and then track exactly where it’s going throughout the month. Let’s take a look at how to use the sheet step by step.
How To Access The Budget Sheet
To access the Budget sheet click on the link in the PDF you received after your purchase.

When google sheets opens navigate to File –> Make A Copy to create your own version of the sheet in your Google Drive.

You will now have access to your own version of the sheet.
How To Use The Budget Sheet
Using the budget sheet is easy and only really contains 3 simple steps.
Step 1: Add Your Custom Spending Categories
The first thing you need to do is navigate to the categories tab in the sheet and add your spending categories. You can add a number of sub-categories to each of the main categories; Income, Needs, Wants, Savings/Investments and Debts.

Each section has a number of available slots. You can keep these as as detailed or broad as you like. Feel free to delete the default categories and add ones that make sense for your budget. Do not add categories outside of the white section.
Step 2 – Creating Your Budget
Now you have added your categories to the sheet, you can start assigning a budget for each category. If you’re unsure how to decide this, I would recommend reading our full guide to budgeting using the 50/30/20 method.
In the monthly budget tab you can see each of the sub-categories you manually added under the main categories.
The only thing you need to edit in this section is the budgeted amount for each category. This it the white budget section in each category highlighted below. Simply add in your expected spend for each of these categories.

Step 3 – Add Your Transactions To The Budget
The final thing you need to do is add your individual transactions in transactions record section. Personally, I like to do this once a week. I download the transactions from my bank account and add them to the sheet manually.
Ensure that you select the tick box beside the transaction if it is Income, Savings or debts as this will remove that spend from your category spending breakdown and daily spend chart.

Enter the date of your transaction, select the category it belongs too from the dropdown and enter the transaction amount. If you want you can add a description of the expense and again, remember to select the checkbox if it’s income, savings or debts.
As you add your transactions to this section, your dashboard will begin to update based on your transaction data so you can track how well you are doing compared to your budget.

Budgeting Sheet Sections Explained
Let’s take a look at each of the sections in the dashboard, so you know exactly what they’re showing you.

Total Budgeted Income – Total of all your expected income sources for the month.
Left To Allocate – This is how much you have left of your budgeted income after allocating a budget to each of your categories as we did in step 2.
Actual Income – This shows the total of your actual income based on the income you have added in your transactions log.
Left to Spend – This is how much you have left to spend this month based on your months income and how much you have already spent.
Category Spending As % Of Income – This shows the typical 50/30/20 Wants and Needs. We have then broken savings and debts into individual categories. This shows you what percentage of your income is going towards each of these categories.
Total Wants & Needs – These sections show the total amount of money you have spent in each of these categories.
Total Savings/Investments & Total Debt Paydown – These sections show how much money you are dedicating to your savings and investments as well as debt paydown.
Largest Expense – This shows the largest expense from you wants category so you can see where you are spending the most of your “Want” income.
Total Spent – This shows how much you have actually spent this month on Needs, Wants and Debts. We don’t include Savings and Investments here as that isn’t actual spending.
Charts

This shows your current spend in each main category vs the amount you have actually budgeted.
If you’re spending more than you budgeted, you need to make some changes.

This shows your spending by sub-category for the “Wants” section. Wants are usually where we spend unnecessarily which is why we decided to highlight this on the sheet.

This section shows a breakdown of Wants/Needs/Savings and Debts so you can see how close you are to the 50/30/20 spending allocation each month.

The daily spending chart allows you to see how much you are spending on a daily basis. You can see I’m spending a lot at the start of the month as that’s when most of my bills are. You might find you spend more at the weekend and can correct that behavior to save more.

This chart shows your spending from both the Wants and Needs categories in the budgeting sheet.
You may find here there are some areas you can cut back on, even if you think you need it.
How To Duplicate The Sheet For A New Month
Each month you can duplicate the sheet and start fresh for a new month.
Navigate to the Monthly Budget tab in the sheet and right click on it –> Duplicate. You can rename this with the Month it relates to.

In the duplicated tab you will need to update the month in the dropdown tab in the top left. You will also need to clear the transactions from the previous month. Simply highligh all the transactions and hit the delete key.
You can now start fresh for the next month.

How To Get Support
Having problems with the spreadsheet or have some recomendations on how we could make it better? Just email us at moneysproutuk @ gmail.com
Wrapping Up
Hopefully this guide has helped you to create a budget and manage your monthly spending moving forward. You may benefit from some of our other free finance guides to help you achieive financial freedom. Check out some of our most popular articles below: