How to Create a Monthly Budget Sheet in Excel (Step-by-Step for Beginners)

Your salary comes in on the first. By the third week, a big part of it is gone, and you’re not quite sure where. Sound familiar?

A simple budget sheet helps with exactly this. It puts your money in front of you in plain numbers: what came in, what went out and what’s left.

You don’t need a paid app or any accounting knowledge. Excel and a few easy formulas are enough. We’ll start with an empty sheet, so it’s fine if you’ve never typed a formula in your life.

These steps work in Excel 2016 and later, Microsoft 365 and the free Excel for the web. Google Sheets works almost the same way, so you can use that too.

First, make a list on paper

Don’t open Excel yet. Take a pen and look at last month’s bank statement and your UPI history. Write down every bit of money that came in and every payment that went out.

Now sort the spending into groups. Around 10 to 15 groups is a good number. If you make 30, you’ll get tired of filling it in. If you make only 4, one big “other” row will hide where your money really goes.

For most families in India, the list looks something like this:

• Money in: salary, business or farm income, rent you receive, anything else.
• Fixed costs: rent or home loan EMI, school fees, insurance, mobile and internet.
• Costs that change: groceries, electricity and water, gas cylinder, petrol and travel, medicines, eating out, festivals and gifts.
• Savings: RD, SIP or an emergency fund.

One small tip makes a big difference. Give savings its own row, like any other bill. If savings is just “whatever is left at the end”, there usually isn’t anything left.

Step 1: Set up the sheet

• Open Excel and click Blank workbook.
• At the bottom you’ll see a tab called Sheet1. Right-click it, choose Rename and type the month, say Jan 2027.
• Click cell A1 and type a title, like Monthly Budget: January 2027. Make it bold so it stands out.
• In row 3, type four headings: Category in A3, Planned (₹) in B3, Actual (₹) in C3 and Difference (₹) in D3.

Planned is what you expect to earn or spend. Actual is what really happens. The gap between the two is the part that teaches you something.

Step 2: Add your income

Starting in A4, type where your money comes from. In our example that’s Salary in A4, Side income in A5 and Other income in A6. In A7, type Total income.

Put the amounts you expect in column B. Leave column C empty for now. You’ll fill it in as the money actually arrives.

Step 3: Add your spending

Skip row 8 so there’s a little space. In A9, type Expenses. Then list your spending groups from A10 down. Our example has nine rows, from Rent in A10 to Savings in A18. In A19, type Total expenses. Leave one more row empty and type Balance in A21.

Fill in column B with what you plan to spend. Not sure? Use last month’s numbers. Your first budget will be a bit of a guess, and that’s normal. It gets better every month.

Step 4: Let Excel do the maths

Now for the formulas. Don’t worry, they’re short. Every formula starts with an equals sign (=). Click the cell, type the formula and press Enter.

Cell	Formula	What it does
B7	=SUM(B4:B6)	Adds up planned income
C7	=SUM(C4:C6)	Adds up actual income
B19	=SUM(B10:B18)	Adds up planned spending and savings
C19	=SUM(C10:C18)	Adds up actual spending and savings
D10	=B10-C10	Planned minus actual for the first expense
B21	=B7-B19	What’s left over in your plan
C21	=C7-C19	What’s actually left over

You don’t have to type the D10 formula nine times. Click D10. You’ll see a tiny square at the bottom-right corner of the cell. Drag it down to D18. Excel copies the formula and changes the row numbers for you, so D11 becomes =B11-C11, and so on.

How to read the Difference column: a plus number means you spent less than you planned. A minus number means you spent more.

A quick example

Here’s what the planned column might look like for a small household. These numbers are only an example. Every family’s budget is different.

Category	Planned (₹)
Salary	35,000
Total income	35,000
Rent	8,000
Electricity and water	1,500
Groceries	6,000
Transport and fuel	2,000
Mobile and internet	800
Children’s education	3,000
Medical	1,000
Entertainment and eating out	1,500
Savings (RD or SIP)	7,000
Total expenses	30,800
Balance	4,200

What if your Balance shows a minus number? Then your plan spends more than you earn. Fix it before the month starts. Cut back on something like eating out. Try not to cut the savings row, because that’s the one that helps you later.

Step 5: Show the numbers in rupees

Select cells B4 to D21. Press Ctrl + 1. A box opens. Click Currency, then choose ₹ English (India) in the Symbol list. Set decimal places to 0, unless you want to track paise.

Depending on your computer’s settings, Excel may also show the Indian style of commas, like 1,00,000.

While you’re there, add some borders from the Home tab and give the heading and total rows a light colour. It’s not just for looks. It helps you find the totals quickly when you’re checking the sheet in a hurry.

Step 6: Make overspending turn red

Excel can colour a cell for you when something goes wrong. This is called conditional formatting.

• Select D10 to D18.
• On the Home tab, click Conditional Formatting, then Highlight Cells Rules, then Less Than.
• Type 0, choose Light Red Fill with Dark Red Text and click OK.

Now, whenever you spend more than planned on something, that cell turns red. You can do the same for C21, so your balance warns you if it drops below zero.

Step 7: Keep a daily spending log (optional)

If you only keep receipts, you can type one total per group at the end of the month. But most people find it easier to note each payment as they go. A second sheet does this nicely.

Make the log

• Click the + next to your sheet tab to add a new sheet. Rename it Log.
• In row 1, type Date in A1, Description in B1, Category in C1 and Amount (₹) in D1.
• Select C2 to C200. Go to Data, then Data Validation. Under Allow, pick List. For Source, go back to your budget sheet and select your group names (A10 to A18). Click OK.

Now each Category cell has a small drop-down menu. This stops you from typing “Grocery” one day and “Groceries” the next. Small spelling differences like that are a common reason a budget gives wrong totals.

Bring the totals across

Go back to your budget sheet. Click C10 and type:

=SUMIF(Log!$C$2:$C$200,A10,Log!$D$2:$D$200)

In simple words, this tells Excel: go to the Log sheet, find every row where the category is the same as A10 (Rent), and add up those amounts. The $ signs keep the ranges fixed, so you can drag the formula down to C18 without anything breaking. Microsoft’s SUMIF guide has more examples if you want to learn further.

From now on, the Actual column fills in by itself whenever you add a payment to the log.

Step 8: Add a chart

Select A10 to A18. Hold down Ctrl and also select C10 to C18. Then go to Insert and pick a chart. A pie chart shows how big each slice of spending is. A bar chart makes it easier to compare groups that are close in size. For a home budget, the bar chart is usually easier to read.

Step 9: Copy it for next month

Right-click the month’s tab and choose Move or Copy. Tick Create a copy and click OK. Rename the new tab for the next month, clear the Actual column and the log, and change any planned amounts. All your formulas, colours and drop-downs come along with it.

Keep the old months. After three or four, you’ll start noticing patterns, like electricity bills going up in summer, or extra spending in October and November around the festivals.

Mistakes beginners often make

The first is typing totals by hand. If you type 30,800 instead of using =SUM, the total won’t change when you change a number. Always let the formula do it.

Another is forgetting bills that come once a year, like insurance, school admission fees or bike servicing. Divide the yearly amount by 12 and add that to each month’s budget, so it doesn’t catch you off guard.

Small cash and UPI payments slip through too. ₹20 here and ₹50 there doesn’t feel like much, but it adds up over a month. Log them, or keep a “small spends” row.

And finally, making the budget once and never opening it again. Check it once a week. Five minutes on a Sunday evening is enough.

Don’t have Excel?

You can use Excel for the web for free with a Microsoft account. Everything in this guide works there. Google Sheets is also free and has the same SUM, SUMIF and colour rules, though some menu names are a little different.

Excel also has ready-made budget templates (File, then New, then search “budget”). They’re fine to use. Still, building your own once helps you understand how it works, and then any template becomes easy to change.

If you want to learn more about managing money, the National Centre for Financial Education, set up with the support of India’s financial regulators, offers free financial literacy resources.

To sum up

A monthly budget in Excel needs four columns, a few SUM formulas and the habit of filling in what you actually spent. Add red highlights for overspending, a log sheet if you like, and copy the tab each month. Give it three months. By then you’ll know where your money goes, and you can decide where you want it to go.

Note: This article shows how to organise household money in a spreadsheet. It is not personal financial advice. For investments, loans or tax, please talk to a qualified professional.