Happy Mother’s Day to all the fellow mom’s out there. I have 5 kids. They are cute… and expensive. Well… not sure how cute they are anymore. My oldest is 21 and the youngest is an awkward middle schooler who plays the Tuba.
My oldest 2 daughters are preparing to move out at the end of July 
and I’ve told them they are not allowed to move out without going over a budget with me. We will obviously use Tiller. I’m still going to help pay for their new apartment, so this is going to change my budget also. Even though the Tiller Foundation Template automatically reveals spending for my budget, I would like to share how to use the SUMIF formula.
(What is SUMIF and Why Can It Be So Helpful?)
Simply put, SUMIF is a function that lets you add up numbers in a list only if those numbers meet a certain condition or criterion that you specify.
Imagine you have a list of all your family’s transactions. With SUMIF, you can easily ask your spreadsheet:
- “What’s the total we spent on ‘Band Camp Fees’ for the tuba player?”
- “How much did we actually spend on ‘Apartment Setup’ for the girls?”
- “What’s our current total for ‘Groceries’ now that the household size is changing?”
Make a copy of the sample spreadsheet.
I am very particular about freezing the first row. In Google Sheets you can do this by grabbing the thick bar above row indicator 1 and pulling it down. You can also use the View menu to freeze rows and columns.
Create a Unique List of Categories
For each category we want to add up expenses.
Insert a new sheet in the spreadsheet.
Use =UNIQUE( and highlight the category column in the budget sheet.
In the next column, use the =SUMIF( formula. Back on the sheet with the list of transactions highlight the range with the categories. I like to press F4 to enable absolute cell referencing. This adds $ to the range to freeze the exact rows and columns. This will be important when you copy the formula to the other categories in the list. Type a comma and click on the category name to indicate you want to look up that category name in the range you just highlighted. Type another comma and highlight the range of amounts that pair with the category transactions. Again, press F4 to apply absolute cell referencing.
Apply this same formula to the other categories on the list.
What are ways that you use =SUMIF()?
-Alice
Tiller Evangelist
