How_to_use_this_template
📖 How to use this template
A month of spending bucketed by category, with a budget on each category and a rollup showing how much of it you have used. The sample is one renter's month.
- Duplicate this project into your own organization (dropdown next to the project name, then
Duplicate) - Rename the eight category sections to match how you actually spend, and delete the ones you do not need
- Set Monthly Budget on each section. This is the number everything else is measured against
- Add one task per expense, filling in Spending, Date and Payment Method
- Delete the sample expenses once you have a few of your own in
How the rollup works
Total Spending adds up the Spending of every expense inside a category. Overview divides that by the category's Monthly Budget.
Both only mean anything on the section rows. An individual expense has no budget of its own, so those two columns sit empty on every leaf row, and that is expected rather than broken.
Overview returns a fraction, not a percentage. 0.94 means you have used 94% of that category's budget. Anything above 1 is an overrun.
The fields
| Field | Where it lives | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly Budget | Section rows | What you have allowed yourself for that category |
| Spending | Expense rows | What that one expense cost |
| Date | Expense rows | When it happened |
| Payment Method | Expense rows | Cash, Credit Card or Debit Card |
| Total Spending | Section rows | Sum of the expenses inside, calculated |
| Overview | Section rows | Total Spending over Monthly Budget, calculated |
Note that Date is a custom field, not a task due date. Nothing here is due, so nothing goes overdue. It also means the Calendar and Timeline views have nothing to show.
Working it month to month
The simplest approach is one project per month: duplicate it, clear the expenses, keep the categories and budgets. The alternative is to keep adding to the same project and filter by Date, but then Total Spending accumulates across months and Overview stops meaning anything.
Pick one before you start. Mixing the two is what turns a tracker into a pile.
Two habits
Enter an expense the day it happens. A tracker filled in weekly is a memory test, and memory tests get abandoned.
Look at Overview once a week, not once a month. The point of a budget is to change behaviour while there is still month left.