I love learning what’s working for others, share your secrets!
I added a “Merchant” column to my Transactions sheet so I could more easily filter by merchant. I found that there is a little known optional “Merchant Name” column that, when added to the Transactions sheet, will sometimes get automatically populated by the transaction importer, so I changed mine to “Merchant Name” to take advantage of that. I added mine between Date and Description, and I setup a bunch of AutoCat rules for my most commonly used merchants (the transaction importer only works for some merchants, less than 50% in my experience so far). I love being able to quickly filter my list this way!
his/her categories. If one person is a many little item spender, and the other person is an occasional big item spender, both sides can feel the other person’s spending is unfair until the totals are run. The way we run things, I absolutely want him to get the thing he wants, because then I have that much budget for a thing for me. 
(We run discretionary below available funds, it just affects our long term goals if we spend a little more some months.)
I’ve added a column for Subcategory, for a little more fine tuning. It’s a pull down and includes things like airfare, accomodations (rolls up to “travel”) HOA, Gas & Electric, Garbage (rolls up to “utilities”) etc. I’ve also added a column for Location. We travel a lot and I like to track expenses to our trips. This allows me to run a report showing how much we spent in the last 3 years going to South Dakota (as an example.) I also normalize the Description column entries to names of the merchants. I didn’t change the column name but I really need to see PGA Superstore rather than PGA TOUR SUPERSTORE VERNON HILLS IL 07/01… This way I don’t need to add a separate “merchant” column and use Auto-cat to fill that column in automatically.
I have a followup/reconciled column (F or R) on my transactions sheet that gets autocat-tagged onto generic transactions like “Amazon” or “Shopping” that I want to break down more clearly. I also use it on transactions that need some sort of followup over time (like to make sure I get a refund back after a return on a prior charge). I have a conditional formatting rule that turns any row with “F” in this column yellow so that I can keep track of it. Once done, I mark it R and the conditional formatting turns off. I also have a custom column for FSA/HSA expenses that gets populated on particular Autocat categories. I use codes to know whether a transaction is still eligible to use (for FSA/HSA) or has already been claimed. I’ll check out Merchant Name!
Nice touch with the added conditional formatting!
I added all these to the Transactions sheet (Excel):
- “Tax Related” (yes no value) - added to the Categories tab and entered there, and then pulled into Transaction via xlookup. I have a separate tab to pull that out for tax filing
- “Quarter” - ex: 1Q2026 is format - formula that returns the quarter in that format that useful in various reports
- “Month Year” - ex August 2026 is format – formula that returns the Month Year in that format that is useful in various reports
- "Date_M/1/Y - ex: 8/1/2026 is format - formula that returns the Date_M/1/Y in that format that useful in various reports
- “Group” - entered on the Categories tab, and pulled into Transaction via xlookup. Critical for most reports
- “Type” - ex: Income/Expense/Transfer, etc - entered on the Categories tab, and pulled into Transaction via xlookup. Critical for most reports
- “Large Expense” - ex: $400 - I enter this value in one cell for the entire spreadsheet, and then use a formula in Transactions to return Yes or No based on the Amount of the transaction. Very useful in reports to filter out the noise and focus just on larger transactions moving the numbers being viewed.
- “Memo” - free form text available for each transaction. Useful to have this in the Transaction tab to surface on other reports. Particularly useful if every Large Expense transaction has a Memo.
- “Project Code” - I have a separate “Budgeted Goals” tab where I enter projected one time large costs. Example would be a “New Walkway”, with projected project costs of $20k - I give this a Project Code on that tab (like 2026-PRJ-1), then whenever any transaction hits associated with that project, I add that project code to the Project Code field on the Transaction tab. In that way I can easily see the actuals vs the budget for that project. I also use the same methodology for planned vacations (Example - assigning a budget line like “Florida 2026” and a projected cost $5k and project code (like 2026-VACA-1) - any expense associated with the Florida trip gets that code and I can see the budget vs actuals easily on one tab. Particularly useful for vaca’s where you might have many individual costs like flights/cars/ubers/meals/activities etc to keep track of…
Did you have have a look at the travel planner sheet? I use that so I needed the travel planner column, but I also modified the sheet and titled it project planner. This way I can budget it down and have it all in a separate sheet that can filter by project. And using a column called project planner with data validation allows to match them and follow your budget.
Oh, I like that. I will have to look at it.
I added a “Frequency” column to the Categories sheet to keep track of the frequency of most of my recurring expenses. Restricted frenquency values include Annually, Quarterly, Monthly, etc. For example, health insurance is paid monthly, but trash service is quarterly. The value entered on the Category sheet is populated onto other standard and custom templates. For example, here’s a snippet from my customized Monthly Budget sheet. This way I don’t freak out when I see a 0 value for a particular category for the month.
I love these ideas. How exactly did you add the columns for Subcategory and Location to make them roll up into a category name? Thanks!
I also use subcategory. It is crucial to my entire build.