How to Make a Budget in Excel (Step by Step)

Why build your own budget spreadsheet?🔗

A DIY spreadsheet works well for a few reasons:

• It costs nothing. Google Sheets is free, and Excel comes with most Windows PCs or Microsoft 365.
• You own your data. No third-party app storing your transaction history.
• It is fully customisable. You build it around your life, not a generic template.
• It makes patterns visible. Typing in your real spending has a way of making the truth hard to ignore.

Prefer an app? Tools like Frollo or WeMoney pull transactions automatically and are better than nothing if you know you will not open a spreadsheet. Our roundup of the best budgeting apps compares them. The trade-off is cost, data sharing and less flexibility.

Before you start: gather your numbers🔗

Building a budget without your real numbers is like cooking without checking the fridge. Take 15 minutes to pull these together:

• Take-home pay. After-tax income, not gross. Paid fortnightly? Multiply by 26 and divide by 12 for a monthly figure.
• Fixed bills. Rent or mortgage, utilities, phone, internet, insurance, subscriptions.
• Variable spending. Groceries, transport, dining out, entertainment. Pull your last two to three months of statements and use the real numbers, not what you think you spend.

Most Australian banks let you download your transactions as a CSV file, which opens straight into Excel or Sheets as a ready-made spending breakdown.

How to set up your budget, step by step🔗

You do not need to be a spreadsheet wizard. Every step below works identically in Google Sheets.

1. Set up four columns: Category (A), Budgeted (B), Actual (C), Difference (D). That is the whole structure. You could run months across the top for a yearly view, but the single-month layout is easier to start with.

2. Enter your income in the first rows, after-tax. Leave a blank row before your expenses so the sheet is easy to read.

3. List your fixed expenses, one per row. Do not forget annual costs like car registration and rates: divide the annual amount by 12 and add a monthly line.

4. List your variable expenses. Be honest here; the point is to see clearly, not to feel bad.

5. Add your formulas. There are only three you need:

• =SUM(B5:B14) totals everything from B5 to B14. Change the range to match your rows.
• =B4-B15 (total income minus total expenses) shows your money left over. A negative result means you are spending more than you earn.
• =B5-C5 (Budgeted minus Actual) fills the Difference column. Positive means under budget, negative means over. Drag it down the column to copy it.

6. Add a "money left over" row and allocate it to savings, emergency fund, debt or a goal. Treat savings as an expense, not an afterthought: put the savings line in before you start spending, and spend what remains.

7. (Optional) colour-code overspending with conditional formatting: set the Difference column to show red below 0 and green above. Handy, but a plain sheet works just as well, so do not let formatting become procrastination.

A simple worked example you can copy🔗

A sample monthly budget for a single person on $5,200 take-home. Illustrative figures only.

Your income, expenses and goals will look different, and that is fine. The structure is what matters, not the specific numbers.

Budgeting frameworks you can build in🔗

Once the basic sheet works, layer in a framework to give your money direction.

• The 50/30/20 rule: 50% needs, 30% wants, 20% savings and debt. Add a summary section that totals each bucket and divides by income to see the percentages.
• Zero-based budgeting: every dollar gets a job until "remaining to allocate" reads $0. See our guide to zero-based budgeting.

Not sure a spreadsheet is your thing? A plain cash budget on paper works too.

Tips to actually stick to your budget🔗

• Update it weekly. Fifteen minutes on a Sunday to enter the past week keeps the numbers fresh.
• Keep it simple. More than 15 to 20 categories and you will stop updating it. Merge "dining out" and "takeaway", combine all streaming into "subscriptions".
• Review it monthly and adjust next month based on where you went over.
• Start from a free template rather than building from scratch if that feels easier.
• Back it up to Google Drive or OneDrive, and share it if you budget with a partner.

Common mistakes to avoid🔗

• Over-complicating the sheet. Forty categories and pivot tables guarantee you will never open it again. Start basic.
• Forgetting irregular and annual costs like registration, rates and Christmas. Divide by 12 and add a monthly line.
• Never updating actuals. A budget with no actual figures is just a wish list.
• No savings line. If savings are whatever is left at month's end, there usually is nothing left.
• Giving up after one bad month. Blowing the dining-out budget once means you are human, not that budgeting fails. Adjust and keep going.

If a spreadsheet feels like too much right now, ASIC's Moneysmart budget planner does all the maths for you online, with no formulas at all.

❓ Frequently asked questions🔗

Keep reading🔗

• How to build a budget
• What is a cash budget?
• Zero-based budgeting explained
• The best budgeting apps