Keeping track of expenses and sticking to a budget can be a tedious challenge. We often collect receipts and sit down with hundreds before reviewing them. Maybe you got tired of it and eventually stopped keeping them. This is not a good practice but is often the result of the physical hassle and confusion of keeping track of all those purchases.
But how do you keep track of these expenses without invoice copies? This is super easy with Google Forms. You can create a form that outlines what you typically see in receipts and records it in your books. Include questions on the form like what to buy for and its price. Use this form from your smartphone right after you make a purchase. This will then send the form results to a spreadsheet that you can review on your computer at home.
In addition to a nice transaction layout, you can set up a spreadsheet to show how much money you have left in your bank account (or in cash). Especially useful for students and the like, who are always worried about draining their budget due to reckless spending before they know it.
In this article, we will first show you how to create a Google form to quickly submit expenses. We’ll then show you how to calculate your available balance and then publish it as a simple web page that can be easily accessed through any mobile phone’s browser. Finally, we’ll talk about publishing a chart of available balances instead.
Let’s get started.
1. Create a Google Form
Open your Google Drive account and select Create > Forms from the menu.
Enter any form title and choose a theme before pressing ALRIGHT.
We will create this form simply with a few questions. They can be customized however you see fit. We will use a Price question with a Letter field as question type. This will allow us to enter any amount we want.
A price is useless without a shopping list for what. Create a new field that is a Many choices Questions include common categories like Gas, Bills, Groceries, et cetera.
Click View live form from the top menu to view the form.
Ours looks very simple but may even include pictures or other questions. Finally, copy the URL of the live form and send it to your smartphone. Make sure you bookmark it there for quick and easy access when needed.
Next to the View live form button is a feedback option. Select this to be prompted for a new workbook name. Enter a new name and press Create.
Use your new form to enter sample prices as Gas expense.
Now we can view and publish the results. Let’s see how to do that.
Hot Tip: Check out our article on how to enable email notifications for Google Docs sheets. It also comes in handy in this case if you plan to share your spending sheet with someone.
2. View and Publish Form Results
To see the results, enter the form and press See the answer to open the newly created spreadsheet.
Form submissions from above are now categorized in the appropriate place.
Because only one category is populated and we want all of them present before continuing, enter a zero quantity (0) for each such category. Make sure you do this from the live form page.
On the side of the page, after you have completed all the blank category entries, enter the following as shown in the screenshot below.
The Amount to start with so how much money you currently have available to spend. Second school for total purchase will include a formula to calculate these transactions against our original amount. The third and final field is called Amount spent will be the amount we have available after submitting the price (deduct).
For the formula to calculate the total number of purchases, just enter =SUM(cell:cell). Replace words cell with the category you have for Price. Ours is the column b.
Now for the last cell on Amount spentsubtract the total amount purchased from the original amount.
The end result will always be an updated plot of how much we have to spend. Take note of the cells. Ours is F5.
Go File > Publish to the web.
Select the correct sheet in the first section and then click Publishing begins. Then select the same sheet in the bottom section and enter the include cell Amount spent value. Because ours is F5, we will enter it in the text field. This will ensure only that cell is published, which is all it takes to see how much is available to spend.
Save the URL at the bottom with a regular Copy command and send it to your phone via email for bookmarking. This will make it very easy to see on the go.
The result is simply a cell like this, viewable in any browser:
Any changes made from the form will make the next change in the Google spreadsheet. This will then automatically publish to the website, thus updating the page you have saved on your phone. You can now profile your expenses and see your available cash at any point in time. All you need to do is visit the page on your smartphone’s browser.
3. Publishing Expense Chart
Instead of viewing your available balance, you can also create a graph of the results to show a graph of where your money will go. For this example, the category needs to be placed before the price column in the form. For example, move the category question above the price question to start.
Now on the feedback worksheet, go to Insert > Graph and use the columns as the data range. Alternatively, choose Use row 1 as the header.
Now choose an appropriate chart like Cake graph.
Update chart details with Update and then on the chart to choose Move to a separate sheet.
Return File > Publish to the web. This time, select the chart’s tab from the bottom so you can get the link to the chart as a web page.
Copy the resulting link at the bottom and use it from any browser to see an updated catalog view of your expenses.
Conclusion
You find it very easy to send your transactions on the go to a nice spreadsheet without opening your Google account or even being near a computer. Not only that, you can get updated balance in your account easily. Just don’t share the document link with anyone. ?
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
