If you’re trying to achieve financial independence or just keep better track of your money, you need to be using a budget. It’s non-negotiable. While there are plenty of budgeting apps out there, you may prefer to create one in Excel. However, Excel can be overwhelming and complicated. But fear not. I will teach you how to make a budget in Excel, and it’s honestly simple. I would not lie to you. 

Once you get the hang of it, you’ll see that creating a budget makes a big difference in organizing your financial life.

So let’s get down to it.

Creating an Excel Budget

The first decision you need to make when creating a budget in Excel is whether you want to use an Excel template or build your own budget from scratch. Either method has pros and cons.

If you use a custom template, you already have a structure to work off of, which can make life considerably easier. On the other hand, many of Excel’s templates are clunky and now outdated.

We’ll go over how to create a budget worksheet from scratch later. Let’s start with Excel’s custom budget templates.

Using an Excel Template

1. Go ahead and open up your Excel application. Keep in mind that your version of Excel may look a bit different than mine as I post screenshots below. However, these instructions should work across all releases.
   
   Scroll up to “File,” and click “New.” A window will pop up, and you’ll see various premade templates.

2. Move your mouse to the search bar that says “Search all templates” and type “budget.” When you do, various budget templates will pop up in your application window. These will include templates like “Manage My Money,” “Personal Budget,” “Family Budget,” “Household Budget” and a whole lot more.

3. Let’s say you want to set up a personal budget. Go ahead and click on that template. You’ll see an Excel sheet pop up that includes graphs, summaries and various line items.

4. It is important not to mess with the formulas, otherwise you will break the spreadsheet. So don’t do that.

Adjust the numbers in your Excel budget under monthly income, monthly expenses and monthly savings to reflect your actual situation. (If your template opened on a page labeled “Summary,” with the other lists missing, do not edit the numbers on that first sheet. Instead, click the sheet titles along the bottom of the Excel sheet and update the numbers on those sheets.) As you add in those numbers, you’ll see the formulas under the “Summary” section of the spreadsheet change based on your entries.

Of course, you can also customize the various rows in this budget by inserting or deleting line items.  For example, let’s say you’ve paid off your student loans and you no longer have that expense.

However, you want to budget $75 per month for the cleaning service that comes to your house. I get it; I don’t like to clean my house either. 

There are two ways you can do this, and both of them are quick.

First, highlight the row that says “Student loans” by clicking on the row number.

Then simply right-click on the highlighted row and click “delete.” Poof, it’s gone from your Excel budget.

Next, click on the same row number to highlight it, then right-click on the highlighted portion. Select “Insert” from the list of options that appears.

Voila! A new row has been inserted, and now you can type in “Cleaning service,” add the date if you so desire, and place the appropriate amount budgeted for the line item.

When you work with an Excel template, that’s really all there is to making a budget. See – not that complicated!

If you’re a true Excel beginner, this is probably the way to go. But if you’re looking for something a bit more custom, let’s talk about how to build a budget in Excel from scratch.

Creating from Scratch

1. Open a New Blank Workbook

To begin, open up your Excel and start with a new blank document. To do this, you can either double click the “Blank Workbook” icon, which will be the top left template, or go up to “File” and click “New.”

The new blank workbook will open.

2. Create a Tab for Your Income

Go to Cell A3. Write the words “Income Source.” This column will represent where you got your income from, such as your paycheck, a side hustle or an investment dividend. Make sure to bold the text for the column headers.

In the next columns, add the following headers.

• Date
• Planned
• Actual
• Surplus / Deficit

You can center the headings to make the columns look neater if you like. 

I went ahead and added some sample data below my column headers. Plus I added a row for totals at the bottom.

3. Add Formulas to Automate Your Spreadsheet

Click on the cell you’d like to add your formula to. So, for my sheet, I’ll click C9.

Then click on the “fx” button at the top.

When you click that symbol, the formula builder will pop up on your screen. 

Now double click on the “SUM” formula in the formula builder box.

That will place the formula “=SUM( )” into cell C9 of your Excel budget. The formula builder will show that you are summing cells C4:C8.

Hit enter again, and now you’ll see the sum total of column C pop into cell C9. If you used the same numbers as my screenshots, you’ll see the number 4,000.

You should be able to copy and paste C9 into D9, but if that doesn’t work in your Excel version, simply repeat the process above for D9. The sum total for column D should read 3,911.44.

To calculate the surplus or deficit for the first income source, “Paycheck 1,” click into cell E4. Hit the = key and then click on cell D4. 

Then enter a minus sign like – into E4. Now click C4.

Hit enter, and the total deficit of -14.28 will appear. Copy cell E4 and paste it below in each row: E5, E6 and E7.

The totals will appear for each row. Finally, go to cell D9 and copy the SUM formula into row E9.

You’ll now have calculated your total budget deficit, which is -88.56.

Of course, you can customize each row to reflect your real sources, dates and numbers. The formulas should update to reflect your new values.

Now it’s time to create the expense side of your budget to track your monthly bills and other expenses. 

To do so, let’s go ahead and create another tab.

You can do that simply by moving your cursor to the bottom of the screen where it says Sheet1.

Double click on the word “Sheet1” so that it is highlighted. Then, type “Income” to name your sheet.

Now move your mouse to the right to click on the + sign. This will create a new sheet called Sheet2. Double click on the word “Sheet2,” and rename it “Expenses.”

You can go back to the Income sheet and copy the column titles in cells A3 to E3. Then click back into Expenses and paste them into the same cells in the new tab.

Change the label “Income Source” to “Expense Category.” I went ahead and filled in some fake data for my screen shot.

The surplus and deficit formula this time will be the reverse of what it was on the income side. Click cell E4 and hit =. Then click C4, type a minus sign –, click D4, and hit enter. Copy E4 into cells E5, E6 and E7.

Create a Total row, and use the AutoSum formula just as you did on the income side in cells C9, D9 and E9.