spreadsheet fiends! how do you do yours?

[iskra]

I keep a very basic spreadsheet of our finances. I copy all the information from our bank statements into Excel, & then ignore it.

Occasionally I do some coding alongside it (looking back, I haven't done this since May) which theoretically allows me to add up everything we spend on T for transport or what have you... I feel like there are much better systems I should be putting in place, but I am no Excel whizz. I would like to know our monthly income & monthly spend, naturally. SO how do you make your spreadsheet work for you?

I downloaded one from the internet called money manager - it's amazing.

I put in my budget and insert our banks statements into it (like copying and pasting into excel), code them to the right area and it gives me reports on what I'm spending, where I'm spending too much and where I've got spare money!

I don't understand a lot of the formulas, but it works and tells me what I need to know.

this is it

I use Microsoft Money.

I have an excel spreadsheet that I designed.

18 pages. Each page has a month on it (so an 18 month cashflow forecast then )

each month is split into weeks. each week is split into estimated and actual.

I put in estimated income for each week for the entire 18 months (add a new sheet every month to keep it 18 months ahead iyswim)

I have set up the formulas so it runs itself really. it's got all my regular outgoings then subtotal, then space for adhoc expenses and sub total, then grand total and any surplus/deficit carried forward

totals add up, surplus/deficit carries forward to the following week, month end totals carry over to the next month, a running total of annual spend to date runs at the side. I put the actual spend into the actual column each week and it calculates the difference between actual spend and estimated spend and whether it is over or under.

I can tell you right now how much I plan to spend for christmas 2012.