Software To Analyze Weekly Spending?

December 2, 2018 10:20 PM

I've been manually tracking my daily expenses in a spreadsheet, which has really helped me be more intentional with money. I put in each row the date, purchase, category and price. Now that I have a few weeks of data, I'd like to be able to compare week to week how much $ I spend on Groceries, Transportation, etc. Are there apps that can help me generate quick reports about my spending? I don't want or need this to be connected to my bank account.

Basically I want to be able to put in a start date and an end date and automatically see a breakdown of dollar amount and spending category, based on the data I've entered.

It would also be nice to see a visual representation of the numbers over time, i.e. weekly grocery spending from 2017-2018.

posted by rogerrogerwhatsyourrvectorvicto to Work & Money (6 answers total)

I use an Excel spreadsheet to track my spending. Each entry gets a category (such as "groceries") and a date, and I also have a Notes column for anything odd to be aware of. Then you can do a Sort by category and date which will show you how much you've spent for each kind of thing.

At the end of December, I'll be setting up a new page for 2019 just to keep it from being too long.

You could also design the page to have the categories across the top and enter the daily or weekly amounts down the side. Put a Total cell at the bottom of the category columns and enter a formula to add up automatically as you go.
posted by MovableBookLady at 11:01 PM on December 2, 2018 [1 favorite]

You can do this very easily using pivot tables and charts in Excel, which is native functionality. I guess it can feel slightly intimidating doing this for the first time, but it really doesn't involve doing much more than highlighting your table cell range and clicking a couple of buttons on the top bar. Search for the version of MS Office that you're using and you'll find dozens of YouTube tutorials.
posted by bifter at 11:31 PM on December 2, 2018 [3 favorites]

Yes, you can do this very easily with pivot tables and charts in Excels, or formulas that link to charts. This is very achievable if you are keen and have a desire to learn more about Excel -- it's not as complicated as VBA/ programming.

I actually do this very same thing with my own expenses, which is set up in a similar format with yours (each row contains date, $, category, comments, tags). This is the "database" that I use to produce all my analysis and charts. With this "database", I can create any chart I want -- weekly expenses on groceries in 2018? Done! Monthly expenses on childcare AND holidays? Done!

This is an example of a formula I have that sums my groceries in a given time period:

=SUMIFS(INDEX(SPENDING,,8), INDEX(SPENDING,,4), "*"&$B13&"*", INDEX(SPENDING,,1), ">="&H$7, INDEX(SPENDING,,1)," < "&G$7)

The name of my database has been set to SPENDING
My desired categories are in referred cell B13 (in this case, this refers to the value 'groceries)
Column 8: Expenses in my SPENDING database
Column 4: Categories in my SPENDING database
Column 1: Date in my SPENDING database
H$7: refers to the start date
G$7: refers to the end date

It can seem complicated when lumped together like this but I would do it step by step and use this as reference.

I have recommended here before, but I use Toshl to record my spending, which outputs it in table like what you described. You can import these tables in. However, for charts, I make them myself, because I have found that no app can make me a chart the way I want them to be made.
posted by moiraine at 1:55 AM on December 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Tiller is a collection of spreadsheets and a service that pulls data from bank accounts (which you do not want), however, you can enter data manually, if you like. You can cancel the subscription anytime, but continue to use any of the spreadsheets you downloaded or added to your Google drive.

Excel is also supported.
posted by notyou at 6:40 AM on December 3, 2018

The Pear Budget spreadsheet might do what you're looking for. It is laid out more for monthly and yearly budgeting but the final summary spreadsheet breaks down spending by categories. Not sure how easy it is to change the date range. I suppose you could always make copies of the sheet and delete data to get specific date ranges.
posted by BeHereNow at 9:13 AM on December 3, 2018

Microsoft Money used to be good for this kind of thing but not sure if they still make that product anymore?
posted by some loser at 1:46 PM on December 3, 2018