Monthly/Annual Cash flow spreadsheet

I’m a big fan of using MS Excel to do calculations, plan and budget. If you’re planning a yearly budget, it helps to make a list of income vs major expenses on a rolling 12 month period to see whether you expect the cash in your bank accounts to cover anticipated expenses.

Here’s a sample cash flow spreadsheet for a couple and their child. I’ve come up with some random numbers and a scenario where the couple doesn’t work (or is on unpaid leave) for a month or two (and thus doesn’t get a paycheck) and some estimated expenses to illustrate how to use the spreadsheet.

This is what it looks like – preview link.

The yellow background cells are the ones that need to be filled. Blue indicates calculations arising from the spreadsheet. The red cells are alerts to watch out for. The last row indicates the amount expected to be in your bank account at the end of the month.

To use this spreadsheet, go to this link and click File -> Make a copy to make a copy of this in your Google account (you’ll have a to login for this). Then you can make changes to the numbers in your own copy of the sheet. Keep coming back to the sheet and check the version history tab to see if I have any more changes than what were there in your copy.

Let me know if you’d like any additional features in this spread sheet.