Budget & Expense Tracking for Specific Project (with some hard mode)
March 23, 2018 5:08 AM Subscribe
Is there an app or a Google Sheets/Excel template that can help me manage a budget for a specific project? The budget will include budgeted and actual expenses, income - and hopefully the ability to allocate particular sources of income to specific categories in the budget.
I'm putting on a show later this year and have made a budget for it (for a grant app that was due February). I would like to make that budget into a more interactive spreadsheet.
Core Features:
- Budget divided into categories & subcategories, with both Budgeted and Actual amounts (as well as an indication of how much is left in the budget)
- Tracking expenses and assigning them specific categories/subcategories - those expenses get automatically calculated into the Actual side of the main budget
- Tracking income (e.g. grants, ticket sales, etc) - also with Budgeted and Actual
- Some way to indicate in-kind support (probably you'd just make it a regular expense for the full amount)
Possibly Hard Mode Features That Would Be Awesome:
- Being able to take specific income sources and allocate them into specific categories/subcategories - for example, we got $1000 from Grant A specifically to hire Actor B, so that $1000 goes towards the Actor B line item. (The grant we applied for required this kind of allocation in the budget so making that information more interactive would be handy)
- Related to the above: a way to figure out how much of each income source we have left (e.g. we've used up X% of Grant A so far or we have $Y of Grant B left over at the end that we should acquit for)
- A way to allocate multiple income sources to the same line item (our show's auspiced by an organisation that takes a small percentage of grants that we apply through them - so in the budget we'd allocate X% of each grant into the Auspice Fee line item)
Think something like YNAB, except the Inflow category allows for more than one subcategory (e.g. each individual grant) and you can assign specific inflow subcategories to specific expense subcategories. And if we find that we have some grant money left over because certain line items went under budget, but there were some that went over budget, we can allocate that extra grant money into those line items - tracking all of this along the way for acquittal purposes.
Right now the budget is on Google Sheets. I have access to Excel but would like an online version so that my production team can also log their expenses. I see budget apps for personal use (too simple) or business use (too complicated) or expense trackers but nothing quite like what I'm envisioning. There is probably a way to make something like this in Sheets/Excel but I'm not sure what formulae to use or how to make it all cross-reference properly.
I'm putting on a show later this year and have made a budget for it (for a grant app that was due February). I would like to make that budget into a more interactive spreadsheet.
Core Features:
- Budget divided into categories & subcategories, with both Budgeted and Actual amounts (as well as an indication of how much is left in the budget)
- Tracking expenses and assigning them specific categories/subcategories - those expenses get automatically calculated into the Actual side of the main budget
- Tracking income (e.g. grants, ticket sales, etc) - also with Budgeted and Actual
- Some way to indicate in-kind support (probably you'd just make it a regular expense for the full amount)
Possibly Hard Mode Features That Would Be Awesome:
- Being able to take specific income sources and allocate them into specific categories/subcategories - for example, we got $1000 from Grant A specifically to hire Actor B, so that $1000 goes towards the Actor B line item. (The grant we applied for required this kind of allocation in the budget so making that information more interactive would be handy)
- Related to the above: a way to figure out how much of each income source we have left (e.g. we've used up X% of Grant A so far or we have $Y of Grant B left over at the end that we should acquit for)
- A way to allocate multiple income sources to the same line item (our show's auspiced by an organisation that takes a small percentage of grants that we apply through them - so in the budget we'd allocate X% of each grant into the Auspice Fee line item)
Think something like YNAB, except the Inflow category allows for more than one subcategory (e.g. each individual grant) and you can assign specific inflow subcategories to specific expense subcategories. And if we find that we have some grant money left over because certain line items went under budget, but there were some that went over budget, we can allocate that extra grant money into those line items - tracking all of this along the way for acquittal purposes.
Right now the budget is on Google Sheets. I have access to Excel but would like an online version so that my production team can also log their expenses. I see budget apps for personal use (too simple) or business use (too complicated) or expense trackers but nothing quite like what I'm envisioning. There is probably a way to make something like this in Sheets/Excel but I'm not sure what formulae to use or how to make it all cross-reference properly.
I've heard that YNAB has been used by business use, and you can do inflows that way - just put the positive transaction toward a specific category rather than "Inflow: to be budgeted". You can split inflow transactions into multiple categories if needed using the normal split features.
If not that, then I've heard it's possible to get ahold of the original YNAB spreadsheet, which might be a good starting point.
posted by mosst at 6:44 AM on March 23, 2018
If not that, then I've heard it's possible to get ahold of the original YNAB spreadsheet, which might be a good starting point.
posted by mosst at 6:44 AM on March 23, 2018
I would look at Quickbooks or other small business accounting software,esp. if you need to do any bookkeeping.
posted by theora55 at 9:52 AM on March 23, 2018
posted by theora55 at 9:52 AM on March 23, 2018
Response by poster: bbqturtle: do you have any resources for the sort of sumifs I'll need to set up?
I don't really need to do any bookkeeping per se (I suspect that's the job of the auspicing org). I just would like to keep track of where our money's coming & going.
posted by divabat at 2:36 PM on March 23, 2018
I don't really need to do any bookkeeping per se (I suspect that's the job of the auspicing org). I just would like to keep track of where our money's coming & going.
posted by divabat at 2:36 PM on March 23, 2018
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As far as your grant situation - that sounds like the thing someone does in an evening pouring over all the documents. No sheet will really make that easier. Most nonprofits that use donations for specific purposes (Ie, donation to build a building) just allocates however much they were already going to allocate to that purpose but the "source" of that money would be the donation. In the end, it's all income and expenses, and tying them is only important if a donation exceeds the budget previously planned.
Make sure you keep any private information off of public spreadsheets.
posted by bbqturtle at 6:01 AM on March 23, 2018 [2 favorites]