Although recording down daily expenses is a little troublesome and some may think that it is not that important, but it does help in financial budgeting. It is difficult for us not to be frugal if we record down our daily expenses because we will be surprised with the amount of money we have spent. "Hmm... now I know why my bank is always empty." It will actually make us frugal almost automatically. we may even feel proud if there are days with zero expenditure.

Besides helping us keep track of your expenses, the record also serves as a diary. We would remember what we did on a certain day by looking at the things we spent. I actually retrieve my vehicle maintenance date here to to estimate whether my vehicle needs for example an oil change already.

You should update your expenses before or at the end of everyday. Anytime when you suddenly think of it, update it. Do not procrastinate or else you will waste time trying to recall the expenditure. You may highlight the ones that should not be spent or are spent by mistake while entering the figures. You can start recording the daily expenses on the first day of any week, not necessarily on the first day of the month or the year.

You do not need accounting knowledge to perform such record. You just need to have a spreadsheet software (e.g. Excel) installed.

Explanation for the spreadsheet template
This template is not best used in hardcopy. It should be used as softcopy in computer.

"Mode" column is for you to write "Cash", "Card" or "Check" ("Cheque" for UK English). If you do not use payment card and check, then you can delete the whole "Mode" column or leave it blank. "Trigger" column is for you to write "Self", "Family" or somebody's initial. It is for you to know who triggers you to spend the money.

You can write more details by using "Insert Comment" function.

To know the total to-date, just select the cell where the last-updated total is, move the mouse pointer to the tiny black square (called 'fill handle') at the lower right corner of that cell until the pointer changes (from white cross to black), hold the left mouse button and drag down.

After one month of putting in the value, you can start doing analysis using the filter function (indicated by the down arrow button on the table heading). For example if you have "fuel" under the "Details" column and you want to know the money you spend for fuel that month, you can just click on the down arrow button on "Detail" column and choose "Fuel". The other categories you may want to know are food, entertainment, socialization etc.

If you want to know the ten biggest expenses within a period of time, just highlight all the filled cells within that period and click "Data > Sort..." on the menu bar.

"Weekly Chart" and "Monthly Chart" sheets are included with line graph readily built-in. When you fill in at least two figures in the table (you need two points to form a line, right?), the graph will start to appear by itself. If you do not want to do analysis and just want to quickly jot down something everyday, I include a simplified template below.

This is how you can keep track of your expenditure. The template sheet can be modified for small company use too. Download: 1) daily_expenses.xls 2) example_expenses_2007.xls 3) daily_expenses_simplified.xls