How To Make a Budget in Excel and Google Sheets

You do not need a fancy app to build a budget that works. A blank spreadsheet, four columns, and two simple formulas will tell you more about your money than most paid tools, and it costs nothing. Excel and Google Sheets are nearly identical for this, so whichever one you already have open is the right one to use.

This guide walks you through building a budget spreadsheet from an empty file. You will set up your columns, enter your income, list your expenses, add the formulas that do the math for you, and then turn the whole thing into something you can reuse month after month without rebuilding it. By the end you will have a real, working budget you understand line by line, because you built it yourself. If you want the underlying method first, how to make a budget walks through the five steps before you open a spreadsheet.

Step 1: Set up your four columns

Open a new spreadsheet. In the first row, you are going to create the headers that make the whole thing work. Click cell A1 and type your first header, then move across the row.

Use these four columns:

• Category (column A): the name of the income source or expense, like "Rent" or "Groceries."
• Planned (column B): what you intend to spend or earn in that category this month.
• Actual (column C): what really happened, filled in as the month goes.
• Difference (column D): the gap between planned and actual, which a formula will calculate for you.

Type Category in A1, Planned in B1, Actual in C1, and Difference in D1. Make that row bold so it stands out as a header. In Excel or Sheets, select the row and press Ctrl + B.

Those four columns are the entire skeleton of your budget. Planned versus actual is the part most people skip, and it is exactly the part that teaches you something. Planned is your intention. Actual is the truth. The difference between them is where you learn whether your plan matches your real life.

Step 2: Enter your income

Leave row 2 for a small "Income" label if you like, then start listing where your money comes from. Under the Category column, type each source of take-home pay on its own row: your main paycheck, a partner's income, side work, anything that lands in your account.

In the Planned column next to each one, enter the amount you expect this month. Use your take-home pay, the number that actually hits your bank account after taxes and deductions, not your gross salary. Budgeting off gross pay is the single most common reason people's numbers never add up.

If your income changes month to month, enter a conservative estimate based on a low but realistic month. That way a slow month does not blow up the whole plan. If you want a deeper method for this, our guide on how to track your expenses pairs well with a variable income.

Step 3: List your expenses

Below your income rows, start listing every expense category you can think of, one per row in the Category column. Do not try to be perfect on the first pass. You can always add rows later.

A good starting set looks like this:

• Rent or mortgage
• Utilities (electric, gas, water)
• Groceries
• Transport or fuel
• Insurance
• Phone and internet
• Minimum debt payments
• Dining out
• Entertainment and subscriptions
• Savings and emergency fund

Keep your categories broad. Forty tiny categories tracked to the penny is a part-time job you will quit by the second week. Ten to fifteen clear categories is plenty for almost everyone. In the Planned column, put the amount you intend to spend on each. Leave the Actual column empty for now, since you will fill that in as real spending happens.

Step 4: Add the formulas

This is where a spreadsheet beats pen and paper. Instead of adding numbers in your head, you let the sheet do it, and it updates instantly every time you change a figure.

The difference formula. Click the Difference cell (column D) on your first expense row. Say your first expense is in row 5. Type:

=B5-C5

Press Enter. That subtracts your actual spending from what you planned. A positive number means you came in under budget, and a negative number means you went over. To copy this formula down every expense row, click the cell, grab the small square at its bottom-right corner, and drag it down. The row numbers adjust automatically.

The totals formula. To add up a column, use =SUM. If your expenses run from row 5 to row 18, click the cell where you want the total and type:

=SUM(B5:B18)

Press Enter and it adds every planned amount in that range. Do the same for the Actual and Difference columns by changing the letter: =SUM(C5:C18) and =SUM(D5:D18). These are the only two formulas you need. =B5-C5 for the gap, and =SUM() for the totals.

Step 5: Add a totals row

Now tie it together with a totals row so you can see the whole picture at a glance. On a fresh row below your last expense, type TOTAL in the Category column and make it bold.

In that row, drop your =SUM() formulas across the Planned, Actual, and Difference columns so each one adds up its full range. Then, to check whether your budget balances, add one more row underneath called something like "Income minus expenses." There, subtract your total planned expenses from your total planned income, for example =B3-B19 if your income total is in B3 and your expense total is in B19.

The goal is for that final number to land at or near zero, not because you spent every cent, but because every dollar has been given a job, including the dollars going into savings. That is the core idea behind zero-based budgeting: assign every dollar a purpose so none of it wanders off unaccounted for.

Step 6: Make it reusable every month

The whole point of building this once is that you never have to build it again. When a new month starts, you do not want to redo formulas from scratch.

The easiest way to reuse it: right-click the sheet tab at the bottom (both Excel and Google Sheets have tabs) and choose Duplicate. Rename the copy to the new month, like "August." All your categories and formulas carry over. Just clear the Actual column, update your Planned numbers if anything changed, and you are ready to go in about two minutes.

Over time you will build a workbook with a tab for every month, which becomes a running record of your money. That history is useful, because it shows you which categories always run over and which ones you consistently overestimate.

Step 7: Add a simple chart (optional)

A chart is not required, but it makes overspending jump out in a way that a column of numbers does not. To add one, select your Category column and your Actual column together (hold Ctrl while selecting both), then in Excel go to Insert > Chart or in Google Sheets go to Insert > Chart.

A pie chart shows what share of your money each category eats, which is great for spotting that dining out is quietly taking a bigger slice than you thought. A bar chart works well for comparing planned against actual side by side. Pick whichever makes the story clearer to you. The chart updates on its own as you type in new numbers.

Sample budget layout

Here is what a finished sheet looks like with a couple of rows filled in, so you can see how the columns and formulas fit together. This is exactly what you are building.

Notice how the Difference column instantly flags the trouble spots. Groceries and dining out both ran over, while utilities came in under. Without doing a single calculation in your head, you can see that this person overspent by 87 dollars, and exactly where it happened. That is the entire value of the spreadsheet in one glance.

The bottom line

A budget spreadsheet is not complicated. It is four columns, two formulas, and a few minutes of setup. Once it exists, keeping it current takes only a couple of short check-ins a week, and duplicating it for a new month takes two minutes.

Open a blank sheet right now and build the columns from Step 1. Enter your real income, list your real expenses, drop in the two formulas, and watch the Difference column start telling you the truth about your spending. You do not need the perfect setup to start. You just need a sheet with your actual numbers in it, and you can have that today.