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For household expenses, a spreadsheet can work wonders. Creating a template is a good idea. You really don’t need a large dedicated program to get an overview of your finances. Grisby, HomeBank, Gnu Cash, etc, are all great programs, but there is something to be said for making something your own. This tutorial is twofold, it teaches you a bit about using OnlyOffice and gives those of you who are not accountants, an end product that you can use. If you are an old hand at Office programs, this may be below you, but you are not the target demographic. This quick introduction follows a discussion we had regarding bookkeeping software on Telegram; when the dust settled, it seems all Mr_Reboot needed was an expense report for his household. I thought we should share it with the rest of the FCM readers. @Mr_Reboot - here is the “nice” version.
There are many LibreOffice tutorials out there, so that is why we use OnlyOffice this time. Having an expense sheet is all well and good, but sometimes one needs more, so, before you start, think about what you would like to get out of this. Now, a spreadsheet is not a database, but if you plan it out properly, you can get a lot of information and insights from it. Think about your columns, would you like to filter by ‘Utility’ or ‘Food’? Do you just care about the bottom line? If you draw a blank, steal with your eyes, look at the LibreOffice weekly or monthly budget forms; after all, it will be *your* custom form when you are done. Grabbing a form from the LibreOffice website is all fine and dandy, but you may not have a car, so the whole section dealing with motor vehicle expenses may be dead weight to you. Deleting the sections you do not need, may mess up the built-in formulas. So what to do?
We make our own! Do you have five minutes to spare? Fire up an OnlyOffice spreadsheet. Take a row to add the month or week at the top. Select 6 columns (A-F) and say, 50 rows (3-53). This will be our “Table”. Once highlighted, select “All borders”. Now would be a good time to save your file as an open spreadsheet template. Whilst you have it selected, why not make it nice looking? Select “Format table as template” and pick your poison. Rename your columns to: date, category, item, recipient, amount, notes. You can put as much as you like here, but remember that the more there is, the more you have to fill in, but on the flip side, it can give you better insights. To make things look well, select row 3 and click on ‘align center’.
Now click on the A in the first column. This will highlight the whole column. We know that this column will contain dates, so, right-click said A, and navigate down to number format. It will expand, so step one over, and choose ‘date’. We are going to repeat these steps for column E, but the format choice will be ‘currency’. Our very last row in our amount column, will be our total, so it is only fitting to add the word Total to the notes column next to it, in our case, F54. If you click on line 54 and it highlights, click on the bold icon, or press ctrl+b. This will make your total stand out. You can also add the word TOTAL to the dates column, this will prevent you from adding anything on that line.
We know that the amount column needs to be totalled. If you have ever used a spreadsheet before, you will know that the ugly E, some say ‘Epsilon’, is used for calculating. One simply highlights the part you need totalled (E4-E54), and press the ‘sum’ button. However, in OnlyOffice, this appears at the top instead of the bottom. I have no idea why anyone would want to sum up…. (okay, I’ll see myself out). Anyway, you can reverse select the column, from E54-E4 and press the ugly E. That said, the OnlyOffice ribbon has a “formula” tab, where you can find more options. Here again, is where OnlyOffice differs. Adding E4-E54 in the sum brackets, will net you an error. A quick fix is to add a 1 to the first row (E4) and a 1 to the last row (E53), then highlight to E54 and press the Ugly E. You can now remove those two 1’s you entered. This whole exercise took us less than 5 minutes. Let’s populate the fields to see if it works?
So I populated my sheet with some bogus data, but now I have a lot of open lines and my total is not on my page. We can hide and ‘unhide’ rows we do not use. In our case, I will select lucky number 13 to 53, right-click, and click hide. The total jumps up to my viewing window. Neat! The arrows next to our headings are also not just for show. Want to know how many times you visited McDonalds? Click the arrow. It will bring up a filter list. Select only McDonalds and it will filter it so. This goes for any of the headings, Want to know how much you blew on entertainment or take-aways (or if you are in Ireland, bring-backs, yes, I know where the door is…) this month? These filters can be an eye opener! This is where the planning comes in – that we spoke about in the beginning. I stole mine from another sheet. Don’t be shy to get your categories from another source. This allows me to get those insights, like, I am spending too much money on fast food, or gasoline, or whatever.
Feel free to experiment with columns that you can filter to get insights into your spending habits. You can even add an income column and get a total of that too, the possibilities are endless – but I suggest keeping it limited by what you need. The nice thing about a template is that you can use it over and over, so January to December should all look the same. Another suggestion is to use the “protection” tab in your OnlyOffice ribbon and encrypt your finances; you do not want others to have access to that information. Did we make a mistake? Are we wrong? Did we help you? Let us know at: misc@fullcirclemagazine.org