Use Excel for my home budget

[Roland Bengtsson]

I would like to try to use Excel to plan my home economy and make a
budget. Currently I use SPCS HemEkonomi 2.1. It's a Swedish program
specially suited for this. But it's a bit old and it have a number of
disadvantages.

I would like to use Excel XP and VBA instead. I have experience from C
and C++ but very limited from Visual Basic. I want the programs
behaviour similar like SPCS. Each new buy is a new input in the system
as a post. The program will then summary choosen time period. Each
post has properties like a main group and group. Is it better to work
with a database like Access for this? Maybe someone already have done
something similar. I would be happy for any hints in the right
direction.

Regards Roland

 

[Bernie Deitrick]

Roland,

Set up a table with headers and 1 footer, giving yourself as many categories
as you can stand to fill in.

Date Item Amount TimePeriod1 TimePeriod 2 .... TimeperiodX
Category1 Category2 Category3 .... CategoryX
EndLine

When you want to enter your data, insert lines for the data above the footer
(that keeps the table together for the pivot table)

Afte you have entered some data, select your entire table, then use Data |
Pivot Table, and create a report that shows your data segregated by however
many categories you want.

When you put in new data, always insert a line above the EndLine, then
select and refresh your pivot table.

HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP