🏆 Budget Plan - Google Sheets

Question: I can’t get the ExternalSource option to work. Should the range in the Notes column be a label (preceded by ') or a formula? Neither seems to work for me.

If the sheet name has a space in it, it needs to be wrapped with single quotes. You can’t, however, start a string in a cell with a single quote, so to make that work, you need to turn it into a formula like this:
='Sheet Name'!A1:L2

Thanks. I get a #VALUE! error when I enter this in Notes:

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Try deleting the = sign and the single quotes… Your entry in notes should look like
Est Quarterly Tax!A56:L57

If that’s the data you want… You are referencing different cells than what was recommended, so I’m not sure what exactly your trying to accomplish…

I had the same issue, removed the two things I told you and then it started working for me. Hope that helps.

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@jpfieber – I’m having issues with sorting by importance, getting a #REF error, hopefully you can help:
Thanks!

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I found that sorting doesn’t work as well as I had intended as the formulas ended up in the field of data instead of in the header. I worked to rectify this in an update that’s in testing. Give that a try and hopefully you get better results.

Thanks! I found that if I wanted to sort by group, I had to only select the left, input set of columns, and not the month columns. then the array formula in the top row of the months would stay put…if I remember correctly.

True, that would work, but if you had any notes they would become out of sync, so use with caution!

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@jpfieber I moved the notes and importance category over to the left of the month columns and that seems to be working great. EXCEPT the formula on the Categories sheet needs to change! whoops

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@jpfieber – do you have any plans to create/publish a template that piggy backs off this budget plan worksheet to create a cash flow template that includes the projected future transactions. The budget plan is amazing and works great. Building on it with this feature would show the user that for a specific category they are saving $ for 6 months, is then spent on the 7th month–which is almost the same way you’ve set up the budget plan, with all the different ways in which you can spread out the cost of a big-ticket item throughout the year.

OR, do you have a personal worksheet in which you’ve already done this, that I could snag a copy of and try to incorporate into my own workflow.

@jfederline seemingly created a great cash flow spreadsheet, albeit he did not post it anywhere. Jim–if you’re still using Tiller and that specific worksheet, would you minding shooting me a DM?

I have played around with some ideas similar to what you’re describing, but don’t have anything usable yet. I made changes to the back-end of Budget Plan that I think would make this kind of follow up easier to make, but the update would likely break many peoples Budget Plan as it requires unique descriptions for each line, so we haven’t yet worked out how to best release that part of it. If you want to try installing that version, and poke around in the hidden data to the right of the sheet, it might give you a good start if you wanted to attempt something of your own.

Sounds exciting :slight_smile: I might give it a shot. Thanks

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I am running into an issue after sorting the Budget Plan. I am getting HREF errors and some formulas seem to be disappearing.

I have restored the template twice now and have had the same issue when filling in the data.

I appears after awhile the page moves to an error state.

Yeah, unfortunately sorting is super tricky and not recommended. I have another version I’m testing that sorts a bit better: Need Help with Update to Budget Plan

This is so cool - However, External source does not seem to be working for me. Is there a way to create a override sheet with the same month column names and then for a particular line item(maybe description can be a unique id) - if something is there in that override sheet, that will override the calculated amount - if that cell is empty, then just the calculated formulas will be used?

Thanks

If the sheet name you’re trying to pull info from doesn’t have a space in it, you can leave out the quotes for the Notes column. So for example, I have a sheet called “Utilities” that I pull budget info from. In my Notes column for that line item, I have Utilities!AF4:AQ5. With the Frequency set to “ExternalSource” it then pulls in the data from that range, and any changes on the Utilities sheet are reflected in my budget items. If it’s still not working, you might try the beta version to see if you have better luck there.

I used this budget formulation for my 2023 budget – it was easy to use and very helpful. How can I use it to build the 2024 budget? Obviously, I do not want to lose any of my 2023 numbers.

thank you in advance for the help.

If you want to keep your old numbers around for reference, the easiest option would be to create a new sheet where you’ll store them (eg. Budget Plan 2023). Go to the Budget Plan sheet and Select All, then Copy. Go to the Budget Plan 2023 sheet and click in A1, then go to the Edit menu and choose Paste Special/Values Only. This will paste all the text from the Budget Plan sheet without any of the formulas or conditional formatting. You can then format it however you please, it’s just standalone text that won’t change moving forward. When you’re ready to do your new budget, update the dates in the Categories sheet (I think @heather has a video on how to do this) and the Budget Plan sheet should adjust to use the same dates. You can then adjust the budget items as needed for the new year.

Thank you! Will work on it next week.