Quarterly Expense Summary

[jennings.lynne]

I am wondering if anyone has created a quarterly expense summary sheet? I am retired and while it is helpful to look at monthly expenses, it is easier to see trends based on quarterly summaries as there are some months where things are higher or lower for certain reasons. I used the spending trends sheet to look at the last quarter and then manually pulled the totals for each category into another spread sheet. I want to do this every quarter and compare each quarter. It would be great if there was a sheet that could do this automatically or more efficiently. I think this is very helpful especially for retirees. Interested in any thoughts. Also, apologies if this was discussed somewhere, I have been trying to look around for answers but not sure I am doing that correctly or efficiently.
Thanks

[twalane]

Hi @jennings.lynne I am yet to see such a solution but in the meantime perhaps you can implement the formula below in a new sheet where you copy your list of categories (in my example from cell A2) and enter start dates for your quarters from cell B1 to the right.

=sumifs(Transactions!$E$2:$E,Transactions!$D$2:$D,$A2,Transactions!$B$2:$B,“>=”&B$1,Transactions!$B$2:$B,“<=”&C$1)

Where
Transactions!$E$2:$E - Amount column on the Transactions sheet
Transactions!$D$2:$D - Category column on the Transactions sheet
$A2 - category cell in the new sheet
Transactions!$B$2:$B - Date column on the Transactions sheet
B$1 - quarter start date cell in the new sheet
C$1 - quarter end date cell in the new sheet

Enter and modify the formula accordingly in cell B2 then drag it across the rows and down the columns. Hope it’s a good starting point!

[martha.rudkin]

Docs: Comparisons report

What is the Comparison Report? An easy way to better understand your spending is by comparing it across two time periods. The time periods could be a week, month, quarter, or year. When your income or spending changes from one period to the next, you can gain a better understanding of what happened by looking at which categories or groups changed the most and least. Our financial comparison report is designed to help you gain those insights. The sheet compares your spending or earnings acros…

This sheet lets you select time periods to compare.

[rhowell]

@jennings.lynne

I am wondering if anyone has created a quarterly expense summary sheet

This question prompted me to add an option to summarize spending (and income and budget) by quarters to my Budget Review sheet:

Budget Review sheet - Actual expenses and income, budgets, and transactions list

Overview This sheet provides a summary of past transactions by category by month or quarter, two budget review sections, which compare actuals to budgets, for the year and the month or quarter, and a section to review underlying transactions without leaving the sheet. I’ve long used a pivot table similar to this sheet to review my spending and income and compare it to previous months. This sheet makes it easier to check that I’m within budget and to see the underlying transactions. Year bu…

[jennings.lynne]

Thanks for sharing this. I work in excel so still hoping someone has created the excel version.

[jennings.lynne]

thanks for sharing this, I have never really worked with complicated formulas so this may be a bit above my current skills set. maybe I should watch a few you tube videos to get more skilled at excel.

[twalane]

I understand! However I’m hoping “the key” I provided will help and you can just replace the letters with your respective columns. Give it a try when you have some time! Get some snacks and put on some happy music