Free monthly budget template for Excel and Google Sheets
A one-page budget for one month. Put your income at the top, plan what each category gets, then fill in what you actually spent and see the difference. Download it and open it in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers. You don't need to sign up or give an email address.
Both files also open in Google Sheets and Numbers. Only the Excel file has the totals.
Updated October 29, 2026
What's in the template
The Excel file has one sheet in four parts: income, expenses, what's left over, and a small table that groups your spending into needs, wants and savings. Every income and expense row has a Planned amount, an Actual amount and the Difference between them. Totals add themselves up.
The planned amounts are the $4,000-a-month example from our guide to the 50/30/20 rule. The actual amounts are a made-up October. Groceries and eating out ran over and shopping came in under, and with $180 of side income on top of pay, $210.64 was left over.
| Category | Group | Planned | Actual | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Take-home pay | Income | 4,000.00 | 4,000.00 | 0.00 |
| Groceries | Needs | 380.00 | 412.86 | -32.86 |
| Eating out | Wants | 300.00 | 341.25 | -41.25 |
| Shopping | Wants | 250.00 | 186.50 | 63.50 |
| Emergency fund | Savings | 300.00 | 300.00 | 0.00 |
| Total expenses | 4,000.00 | 3,969.36 | 30.64 |
The CSV has the same categories with their group, planned and actual amounts, and no totals, because a CSV file can't hold formulas.
How to open it
Excel
Double-click the .xlsx file. If Excel opens it in Protected View, click Enable Editing.
Google Sheets
Upload the .xlsx file to Google Drive and open it. To keep working on a Google copy, choose File, then Save as Google Sheets. To start from the CSV instead, make a blank spreadsheet and choose File, then Import.
Numbers
On a Mac, double-click the file or drag it onto Numbers. On iPhone or iPad, save it to the Files app, then open it from Numbers.
How to fill it in
Put the month in B4, then make the categories yours. Type over the names, and delete the whole row for any category you don't need so the totals shrink with it. Then work through the columns:
| Column | What to type | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Category | A kind of income or spending. | Groceries |
| Group | Needs, Wants or Savings for an expense. Income rows say Income. | Needs |
| Planned | What you expect to earn or plan to spend this month. | 380.00 |
| Actual | What you really earned or spent. | 412.86 |
| Difference | Nothing. It fills in. | -32.86 |
Fill in Planned at the start of the month. Begin with the bills that don't change, like rent and insurance, then savings, then everything else. Aim for a planned Left over of zero, which means every dollar of income has a place, savings included. That's the idea behind a zero-based budget. Fill in Actual as the month goes, or all at once at the end.
In both sections, a positive Difference is good news: income above what you planned, or spending below it. A negative one shows where the month missed the plan.
To add a category, insert a row between two existing ones, not under the last, so the totals and the group table pick it up. Then copy the Difference cell from the row above, since a new row starts empty.
Savings covers money you set aside and debt payments above the minimum, as in the 50/30/20 guide. Minimum payments on a loan or card count as needs.
Where the actual numbers come from
The Actual column needs a record of what you spent. Bank and card statements are one: at the end of the month, add up each statement's lines by category. That works, though cash shows up only as ATM withdrawals.
A spending log is quicker to total. Our income and expense tracker template records every payment with a tag, and one SUMIFS formula there gives a month's total for a tag, ready to copy into this sheet. Logging each purchase on your phone as you pay saves rebuilding the month from memory at the end.
Whichever you use, name the categories the same way in both places. "Eating out" here and "Restaurants" in your log makes every month a matching exercise.
The formulas
The totals are plain sums. Total expenses in the Actual column is:
=SUM(D12:D24)With the example rows it gives 3,969.36. Difference is planned minus actual for an expense and actual minus planned for income, so that positive always means good news. For groceries on row 14:
=IF(AND(C14="",D14=""),"",C14-D14)The IF keeps the cell blank on a row with no amounts. Left over is total income minus total expenses, =D9-D25, which is 210.64 in the example.
The group table uses SUMIF, which adds up the cells in one column where another column matches a word. This gives actual spending on needs, with the word Needs in A30:
=SUMIF($B$12:$B$24,$A30,D$12:D$24)It comes to 2,035.63. The Share of income column divides each group by actual income: =IF(D$9>0,D30/D$9,"").
SUM, SUMIF and IF are standard functions in Excel, Google Sheets and Numbers.
Reading the 50/30/20 table
The last table puts your month next to the 50/30/20 rule. In the example, needs took 49% of actual income, wants 27% and savings 19%.
Savings landed under 20% only because the side income raised the total without being given a job. Moving the $210.64 left over into the emergency fund would take savings to 24%.
If you use a different split, such as 60/20/20 in an expensive city, type your own targets into the 50/30/20 guide column. The rule is a starting point, and our 50/30/20 guide covers when to adjust it.
Common questions
Is it really free?
Yes. Download it and change it however you like.
How do I start a new month?
Copy the sheet within the file, change the month in B4, and clear the Actual column. Each month gets its own tab, and you can look back at any of them.
What if I'm paid every two weeks?
Most months have two paychecks, and two months a year usually have three. Plan every month on two, and treat the third as extra that you decide on ahead of time, for savings or a large bill. There's more on this in how to budget your paycheck.
Is this the same as tracking expenses?
No. A budget is a plan, and a tracker records what happened. This sheet holds the plan and the month's totals, and a tracker like our income and expense template keeps every payment.
