Google Sheets is an invaluable tool that has been available as a digital cloud-based spreadsheet program since 2006. It has long been used in business, much like Microsoft’s Excel, and today it is used by billions all over the world.
The purpose of Google Sheets is to offer a little bit more when it comes to organizing, collating, editing, computing, and sharing data.
For example, Google Sheets conditional formatting allows you to highlight cells in a sheet so that you can easily find data without having to spend time searching for it. It is features such as this that make Google Sheets an incredible resource for keeping a family on a tight budget, or any budget at all.
Learn more about Google Sheets, and how you can use it for your own family budget, right here.
The Template is Your Friend
A template is a pre-formatted tool or sheet that can help you to create a document or spreadsheet easily without worrying about too much formatting.
Google Sheets is home to hundreds of spreadsheet templates that can help you with your family budget. There is bound to be at least one that you will like.
Google Sheets was created with the development of budgets in mind. So, unlike Word, you are going to have access to a library of templates that are almost exclusively about budgets.
Pantry templates, to-do list templates, grocery list templates, menu and meal planning templates, are all here in Google Sheets. You can include your pricing and costs on these templates and effectively use Google Sheets templates for the whole family.
Get fancy with them with drop-down menus, conditional formatting for duplicate cells, and bring your family life to life on Google Sheets.
Don’t Forget to Budget
It’s easy to forget the littlest expense that may crop up during the average family’s month. It’s just as easy to forget what might be coming in. You can automate all of that with the budgets you create on Google Sheets.
With Google Sheets, you can track everything that is coming in and going out. Set alerts on your phone or calendars to enter data as it comes in if you forget to do that. Then you are always keeping your budgets and Sheets up to date. Automation in Google Sheets for the family budget is going to help you to track exactly what is going on while automating it for you and cutting out much of the work.
Expand Your Folio of Formulas
You may already have a basic understanding of some of the simpler formulas in Google Sheets, but you may have no idea what is available out there. Google Sheets allows you to do more than just sum, divide, and color or highlight cells. There are as many formulas for Google Sheets as there are templates.
Start with lists and watch budgets and analysis grow from there. Even chore lists can be budgeted into your lists if your children need tools to get the jobs done. This way, you never forget anything, including, what you are spending on your family.
You can use these templates not just for financial budgeting, but for time budgeting as well. Then, merge the cells and the data into a new sheet or tab and budget some more. Say for example you wanted to organize chores a little more. You’ll have the chore listed, what your child needs to get it done, and maybe an incentive for that chore. That incentive will need to go into your budget, as will the tool for the chore.
You also want to budget the time you want your child to spend on that chore. You may even want to have Google Sheets determine how much of an incentive to give to your children, based on how long it took them to do the chore. So, if for example, they got the chore done in half the time, they get twice the incentive. You can use Google Sheets to calculate all of that.
If formulas, such as, “If cell A is greater than cell B, then $5 or $10” work well when budgeting for families. In Google Sheets language, that looks like, “=If (A1>b1, “$5”, “$10”). You can then use the Sum formula to add up how many incentives you owe your hard worker, and then merge that data into a new budget so that you know exactly what you are spending on them then.
Learn Google Sheets Like a Pro
Google Sheets is not a difficult application to master. If you are using it for the family budget, it won’t take you long at all to organize Google Sheets exactly the way that you want. You will be amazed at how easy it is to learn, and how much easier it is to manage things around the house.
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