The best free budget templates in Excel
Excel has been around since the 1980s, and in that time there hasn’t been a single alternative to take away its title as the best spreadsheeting tool. So a combination of Excel and budgeting sounds like a match made in heaven.
Mani Dhanoa
Excel has been around since the 1980s, and in that time there hasn’t been a single alternative to take away its title as the best spreadsheeting tool. So a combination of Excel and budgeting sounds like a match made in heaven. Well you’re not wrong, in this article we discuss some of the key benefits and contenders for an Excel based budgeting tool.
A budgeting template tracks income and expenditures and allows you to stick to whatever budget you set for yourself, it allows you to keep an eye on money and take action when needed. These are very common for large corporations and also for individuals, for example, uni students, planning big events such as a wedding and for households.
Did you know: 88% of CFOs use spreadsheets for budgeting
You may be wondering why so many people use these, well some of the pros of using budgeting templates include:
- Most people know how to use Excel: time is saved on training with so many online courses, universities teaching students how to use it and overall ease of access.
- Ease of sharing: Data and file sharing is as easy as attaching the template in a email
- Minimal secure data: There’s no need to input bank details, and you only input total values. If somebody gets a hold of your budget template they won’t be able to decipher much.
- Customisable: My personal favourite pro of these is the customisability. You can edit the template to show exactly what you want to see, be it charts, tables, or even tracking the amount you’ve spent coffees.
The best free budgeting Excel templates
We’ve taken some time to review some of the budgeting templates out there and have produced a list of our favourites.
Expense tracker by Sheetgo
This is ideal for small businesses/families, it has a feature called expense tracker workflow which gives you a better understanding of where your expenses come from, you can share this with each user (employee/family member) so they can track their spending and all are combined into the expenses master sheet where budgeting data is combined for an overview of company/family spending.
Annual budget planner by budget templates
For those of you focusing on long-term financial planning, this is a great option. Offering a yearly budget planner, you can customise additional income and investments, great for seeing trends in spending and longer-term investments.
Portfolio tracker – spreadsheet.com
For shareholders, actively helps keep an eye on your investments over time. Most of this is the return on investment over time, also has visual representation and loss and gain columns, perfect for those both experienced and new to investing, though this is not a budgeting template it can definitely help financially.
Vertex 42 – money management for kids
Considering the lack of financial education in schools, this is an amazing tool to help with Money management for kids. It includes a demo video or tutorial, helping children become financially literate.
Pear budget
A free spreadsheet that tracks monthly household spending, they also have an analysis tab that looks through expenses from different categories and shows the difference between actual and budgeted spending. There is also an updated online version which does not require download and is available for a free 30-day download.
All of these are useful, but this depends on your requirements. To understand what your require from a budgeting template, first answer yourself these:
- What are you trying to budget for?
- How often do you want to update it?
- Is this spreadsheet clear, do I understand what it’s telling me?
Excel templates are a great way to budget, no need to give bank details and easily accessible, we hope this article has given a good insight into budgeting templates!