davis@wanginst.EDU (Franklin Davis) (06/24/87)
Do you use Excel for keeping a family budget, bank accounts, and perhaps a small business (e.g. freelance consulting with a couple of dozen clients)? Mail me if you will send me templates to learn from. I'm using Excel 1.01. If there are convincing enough arguments, I may upgrade, but the reason I want the budget programs is that we're fast running out of $! --Franklin (can't wait to graduate...) -- Love's mysteries in souls do grow, But yet the body is his book. --John Donne franklin a. davis (fad) ...roll away...the dew...
waltervj@dartvax.UUCP (walter jeffries) (06/25/87)
>Do you use Excel for keeping a family budget, bank accounts, and >perhaps a small business (e.g. freelance consulting with a couple of >dozen clients)? Mail me if you will send me templates to learn from. > >I'm using Excel 1.01. If there are convincing enough arguments, I may >upgrade, but the reason I want the budget programs is that we're fast >running out of $! > >--Franklin I have a set of templates that do budget tracking if your interested. You set it up by specify the categories of your budget such as rent, food, fun, etc. You also specify a number of accounts such as NOW, J's Checking, Savings, G.Bonds, etc. Once it is set up you enter your expenses and income in a ledger which is the first section of the main worksheet. The entries are very much like a checkbook ledger (date, check, category, account, item, who, amount...) When the system calculates it does error checking on your entries to show you where you've made typo's in the names of accounts and categories. This makes it very easy to find data entry errors. It also has a column for putting in a check mark when you receive check marks back. (This is not to say that every thing needs to be a check. I also have cash and transfer entries.) The second section of the main worksheet does an overall summary of your accounts (starting balances, income, expenses, final balances) and a projection for your years overall financial situation. It uses the IRS's table G to give you a rough estimate of your tax liability (based on 1986 tax tables as I didn't have a copy of the new ones when I last updated it.) The third section of the main worksheet breaks your finances down by category. It shows you how much income and expenses you had in each category. Breaks each category down per month, and estimates them per year. This section also allows you to give monthly or yearly budget estimates and then breaks down how much money you have left in each category. Although I love Excel macros, this package doesn't use any. Rather, it is heavy in the database functions. I have been using successive generations of this program that I originally wrote in Multiplan and then completely redid for Excel. I have now gotten a number of requests for it and will try to get organized and write up some documentation and put it on the net as shareware. That'll happen Real-Soon-Now. If people are interested please send me e-mail with suggestions and comments. Maybe it would be worth my time to do it up right if enough people are interested. -Waltervj@dartvax