Free monthly budget template (Google Sheets, Excel or printable)

What a budget template needs (and what it can skip)

Plenty of free templates online come with thirty tabs, pie charts and color everywhere. You open them twice, then forget them. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s own worksheets are much plainer: a spending tracker where you total receipts by category each week, and a cash-flow budget that follows your balance week by week. That plainness is the point.

Your template only has to answer three questions:

1. How much did I plan for each category? (the “Planned” column)
2. How much did I actually spend? (the “Actual” column, calculated automatically from your transactions)
3. Where am I ahead or behind? (the “Difference” and “% used” columns)

What it can skip: charts (useful once a year, not every week), receipt-level detail on the Budget tab (that lives in Transactions) and endless sub-categories. Fifteen to twenty category rows is plenty.

The complete template, ready to copy

Here’s the exact layout. Letters and numbers match the sheet’s columns and rows, so if you keep the positions, the formulas work as written.

TAB 1: "Budget"

Row 1   Month: ____________
Row 2   Expected income this month (cell B2): $______
Row 3   (blank)
Row 4   A: Category | B: Planned | C: Actual | D: Difference | E: % used

— FIXED —
Row 5   Rent or mortgage
Row 6   Utilities (power, gas, water)
Row 7   Phone and internet
Row 8   Insurance
Row 9   Loan payments
— VARIABLE —
Row 10  Groceries
Row 11  Gas and transit
Row 12  Health and copays
Row 13  Dining out
Row 14  Personal and clothing
Row 15  Subscriptions
Row 16  Fun money
— SINKING FUNDS AND BUFFER —
Row 17  Gifts (yearly amount ÷ 12)
Row 18  Unexpected
— SAVINGS —
Row 19  Emergency fund
Row 20  Goal (vacation, car, etc.)

Row 22  TOTAL: B22, C22, D22

FORMULAS (US English settings)
C5  =SUMIF(Transactions!$C:$C,A5,Transactions!$D:$D)   copy down to C20
D5  =B5-C5                                             copy down to D20
E5  =IF(B5=0,"",C5/B5)                                 format as percent
B22 =SUM(B5:B20)
C22 =SUM(C5:C20)
D22 =B22-C22
B24 Left to assign: =B2-B22   (target: 0)

TAB 2: "Transactions"

Row 1   A: Date | B: Description | C: Category | D: Amount | E: Paid with
Row 2+  one purchase per row, amount as a positive number
        Column C: dropdown list of categories (Budget!A5:A20)

Three details that prevent most errors:

• Name the second tab “Transactions”, with no spaces. A name like “My Spending” has to be wrapped in quotes inside formulas ('My Spending'!C:C), and that’s where formulas usually break.
• Separators depend on your locale. US and UK settings use commas between arguments. Many European settings use semicolons (=SUMIF(A:A;A5;D:D)). If a formula throws a parse error, check this first.
• Keep amounts positive in Transactions. The Difference formula handles the math; you don’t need minus signs when you type.

Building it in Google Sheets

Allow twenty minutes the first time. Menu labels can shift slightly between versions.

1. Create a blank sheet and rename the first tab “Budget” (right-click the tab, then Rename). Add a second tab called “Transactions”.
2. Check the locale: File menu, then Settings. Pick your country so currency, decimals and separators match.
3. Type the headers and categories in rows 4 to 20 as shown. Fill column B with your planned amounts.
4. Enter the formula in C5, then drag the small blue handle at the cell’s bottom-right corner down to C20. Do the same for D5 and E5.
5. Add the dropdown: on Transactions, select column C, then Data menu, Data validation. Choose “Dropdown (from a range)” and enter Budget!A5:A20. Every purchase now lands in a category that exists, with no typos that would make SUMIF skip it.
6. Add conditional formatting: select D5:D20, then Format menu, Conditional formatting. Rule “Less than” 0, light red fill. Add a second rule on E5:E20: “Greater than or equal to” 0.8, orange fill. Orange means 80% used; red means over.
7. Freeze row 4 (View menu, Freeze) so headers stay visible as you scroll.

The big advantage of Sheets: you can share it with a link, which makes a couple’s budget much easier. Both people add purchases to the same Transactions tab.

Building it in Excel

Same logic, different menus.

1. Tabs: double-click “Sheet1” to rename it “Budget”, then add “Transactions” with the + button.
2. Formulas: type them as shown, then fill down with the fill handle (or double-click the handle).
3. Dropdown: Data tab, Data Validation, Allow: List, Source: =Budget!$A$5:$A$20.
4. Conditional formatting: Home tab, Conditional Formatting, Highlight Cells Rules, “Less Than…” 0 for column D. For a whole-row warning, choose New Rule, then “Use a formula to determine which cells to format”, and enter =$C5>$B5 for the range A5:E20. The entire row lights up when actual beats planned.
5. Currency format: select B5:D22 and apply Currency. Negative differences show with a minus sign or in red, depending on the format you pick.

Tip: turn the Transactions range into a table (Home tab, Format as Table). New rows then inherit the formatting and the dropdown automatically.

Both programs also include budget templates in their template galleries. They work, but you’ll spend time deleting categories you don’t use. Starting from the layout above avoids that.

A filled-in month, to the dollar

Here’s the sheet for Dana, a dental hygienist in Columbus, Ohio. She’s paid every two weeks: two take-home paychecks of $1,640 this month, so $3,280. Every dollar is assigned, and “Left to assign” reads $0.

Check the math: positive differences add up to 22 + 15 + 18 + 9 + 16 = $80; negatives to 22 + 37 + 18 = $77. 80 − 77 = $3, which is exactly 3,280 − 3,277.

What Dana reads from her sheet:

• Three red rows: utilities (a heat wave), groceries and dining out. Groceries have been over three months running, so the plan is wrong, not Dana.
• Gas came in $22 under, which covered the utilities overshoot. Moving money between lines is normal; ignoring the gap is not.
• Next month: groceries go to $510 and personal drops to $40, and dining out drops by $10. The planned total stays at $3,280.

The gifts fund shows 100% used even though she bought no gifts: that $40 moved to a separate savings account. Our guide to sinking funds explains why. And in the two months a year when a biweekly schedule brings a third paycheck, Dana doesn’t add it to this sheet; it goes straight to savings.

The one-page printable version

Prefer paper? Print this or copy it by hand. You do the math once a week, which is also a good way to get a feel for your numbers.

BUDGET FOR: ______________          Income this month: $________

CATEGORY               PLANNED  WK 1    WK 2    WK 3    WK 4    ACTUAL  DIFF.
Rent / mortgage        _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
Utilities              _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
Phone / internet       _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
Insurance              _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
Loan payments          _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
Groceries              _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
Gas / transit          _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
Health                 _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
Dining out             _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
Personal / clothing    _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
Subscriptions          _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
Fun money              _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
Sinking funds (÷ 12)   _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
Unexpected             _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
Savings                _____    _____   _____   _____   _____   _____   _____
TOTAL                  _____                                    _____   _____

Actual = Wk 1 + Wk 2 + Wk 3 + Wk 4          Difference = Planned − Actual
Left to assign = Income − Total planned = ______ (aim for 0)

Biggest 3 gaps: 1. __________  2. __________  3. __________
What I'll change next month: ______________________________________

Keep the week’s receipts in an envelope clipped to the sheet. On Sunday, total them by category and write each total in that week’s column.

The weekly review, spreadsheet open

A template filled in on the 1st and reopened on the 30th doesn’t help: by then the overspending has already happened. The rhythm that works is weekly, same day each time.

For the next month you have two options: one file per month, or a single Transactions tab with a “Month” column that SUMIFS uses as a second condition. The first is simpler; the second lets you compare months side by side.

Spreadsheet, paper or app?

The best format is the one you’ll still open in week three. Many people mix them: an app to log on the spot, a spreadsheet for the monthly review. Our guide to choosing a budgeting app compares the options. In the UK, MoneyHelper’s free Budget Planner is another option; in the US, the FTC’s budget worksheet on consumer.gov is a simple printable alternative.

With Binome360, you log a purchase in one sentence as it happens, and each amount counts against its category budget. The app doesn’t connect to your bank and doesn’t send overspending alerts: your weekly check-in plays that role, just as with a spreadsheet.

Frequently asked questions

Does Google Sheets have a free monthly budget template?

Yes. The template gallery includes budget templates, and the layout on this page takes about twenty minutes to rebuild. It uses only standard functions (SUM, SUMIF, IF), so it works in Google Sheets, Excel and most free spreadsheet programs.

What categories should a monthly budget spreadsheet have?

Start with four groups: fixed costs, variable spending, sinking funds and savings, with three to five rows each. Add a category only when it’s large enough to matter or you want to watch it closely.

How do I make a budget spreadsheet calculate automatically?

Log each purchase in a Transactions tab with a category, then use SUMIF on the Budget tab to total each category. The Difference column (planned minus actual) and conditional formatting do the rest.

Should I track every small purchase?

For the first three months, yes. Small untracked purchases, often in cash, are what open the gap between your spreadsheet and your bank balance.

In short

A budget template that works has two tabs, four formulas and one color rule. The rest is the weekly habit. First step tonight: open a blank sheet, copy rows 4 to 22 from the template and fill in only the Planned column.

Sources

• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Your Money, Your Goals, “Spending tracker” (2018) and “Creating a cash flow budget” (2021): consumerfinance.gov/your-money-your-goals/tools.
• Federal Trade Commission, consumer.gov, “Budget Worksheet”: consumer.gov.
• MoneyHelper (Money and Pensions Service), Budget Planner: moneyhelper.org.uk.
• Binome360 calculations for the worked example (fictional month), September 2026.

Also available in Français.