[dropcap]I[/dropcap]f you are a busy stay-at-home mom, money is on your mind a lot. Just thinking about the daily expenses, the costs of groceries, and every little request that comes your way from the tiny human army in front of you can send you spinning. It doesn’t have to feel so awful. When you have the power of Google Sheets at your hands, life just feels easier.
Google Sheets is a free spreadsheet system that you can use to track everything that is coming in and going out. When you see the reality of numbers in front of you, it makes it easier to take care of problems before they become problems, and feel relief. Sometimes moms worry about problems that aren’t even there, and Google Sheets can help you to highlight that doubt as well. Learn more about how you can conquer the daily tasks of expense tracking when you are a busy mom.
Google Sheets Free Templates
Google Sheets offers free templates for any level of spreadsheet user. You can choose monthly templates and create sections and tabs that give you a daily outlook. Monthly budget templates are available, and Google Sheets has a template gallery where you can choose the template that works best for you.
In Google Sheets, choose a monthly budget template that has two sheets. This allows you to go back and forth between the tabs on the bottom section of the sheet. Here you will see pre-set tabs for summary functions, start and end balances, and even a line for savings.
You can also use these budgets to not only track your daily income and expenses, such as groceries and utility bills, but you can use them to plan ahead as well. Tabs labeled as Transactions can help you to see in front of you what you have, need, and have coming in.
Create an Automated Budget
An automated budget is a budget within Google Sheets that allows you to track what is happening every day, month, and year. Automated budgets in Google Sheets can be broken down by the section that you need. Some automated budgets in Google Sheets will automatically divide your money into sections.
One common template in Google Sheets allows you to have one sheet for income, one for expenses, and another to summarize all of your data. These are divided into tabs at the bottom of your Google Sheets.
You can also create categories for your budget, such as food, entertainment, and gas expenses. Another section can divide your income lines by your pay frequency, and this will help you to determine how much you want to update and keep an eye on how that matches your expenses lines. Multiple sheets can be used to separate or merge the different categories of your income and expense lines, sheets, and tabs.
Highlight Duplicates in Google Sheets
When you are working with Google Sheets, formulas such as the highlight feature will make you feel like you are the organizational superhero of your family. You can sum up the cells of your spreadsheets manually, or use formulas to create magic and provide answers in seconds.
One of those formulas is the function where you can highlight duplicates in Google Sheets. This will allow you to determine the lines in your budget that are identical. Sometimes you may want that to be the case, such as your weekly grocery item. And sometimes you might not want to.
To use a function such as this, go to the Format tab in your Google Sheet, select conditional formatting, and then decide how you want to highlight your Google Sheet. This will be an actual highlight, where in just a second, Google will put the color of your choice in cells on your spreadsheet to help you to find duplicate answers.
Use Google Sheets at Home
There are hundreds of formulas in Google Sheets that you can choose from that can perform simple tasks such as this. When you are a stay-at-home mom managing multiple things at once every minute of every day, having everything organized in one place can turn a bad day into a good one. Use Google Sheets at home to balance your income and expenses, and you will find relief over this daily concern in just a few clicks.
