A free Google Sheets budget template you can build in ten minutes

Why a budget spreadsheet still works

A spreadsheet is free, transparent and portable, and it never asks for a bank login. For a first budget it is genuinely a good choice: you see every formula, so you never have to trust a number you did not compute.

What it does not do is keep up. A monthly budget sheet becomes work at exactly the moment the month gets busy, and the phone experience — the place where most transactions actually happen — is where spreadsheets go to die. That is worth knowing before you invest an evening in one.

The five-column layout

Open a blank sheet and name the first row exactly like this. Nothing else is needed; every extra column is a column you will stop filling in.

• A1: Date — use a real date format, not text. `2026-10-14`, not “14 Oct”.
• B1: Category — one of your envelope names, spelled identically every time.
• C1: Description — the shop or the person, short.
• D1: Amount — positive numbers for spending, negative for income. One convention, always.
• E1: Place — bank, home or wallet. This is the column a normal template forgets and the one that tells you why your balance and the bank’s disagree.

The three formulas that do the work

Put your category list in column G, then paste these into H, I and J on the same row as the first category. Drag down.

• Spent: `=SUMIF($B:$B,$G2,$D:$D)` — total per category. G2 is the category name.
• Count: `=COUNTIF($B:$B,$G2)` — how many transactions. A category with a large total and one line is usually a mis-entry.
• Remaining: `=K2-H2` where K holds the budgeted amount for that category. Negative means you are over, which is the only signal you need at a glance.

Build it in ten minutes

1. Create the sheet, add the five headers and format column A as a date.
2. Type ten real transactions from the last week — including at least one cash payment.
3. List eight to fifteen categories in column G and your monthly limit for each in column K.
4. Add the three formulas, drag them down, and check that the totals match a manual addition.
5. Add a row at the top with total income, total spent and the difference. That is your whole dashboard.
6. Freeze the header row, and add a second tab called “month” that you copy for each new month — one tab per month, never one giant sheet.

Where budget sheets break

• Typing on a phone: the moment a transaction takes more than fifteen seconds, it stops being recorded.
• Cash: unless you add the place column and reconcile it weekly, cash spending becomes invisible.
• Category drift: “Groceries”, “groceries” and “Food” become three categories with three totals.
• Duplicates: copying the previous month’s tab and forgetting to clear it is the most common spreadsheet error there is.
• History: after a year the file is large, slow on mobile, and impossible to query without pivot tables.

Moving the sheet into an app

You do not have to rebuild it. SmartJib imports a CSV: export your sheet, keep four columns — date, category, description, amount — check that dates are ISO and amounts use a dot for decimals, then map them on the import screen and check the preview before anything is saved. The full walkthrough, including the mapping table and the date pitfalls, is in the import guide.

Frequently asked questions