Budget first, or log first?
Four sheets for four questions: Tally — what did I plan and what happened; Outlay — what did I spend, by category and month; Nest — when will I reach each goal; Dues — what do my fixed costs come to and when is each one due.
A budget starts from a plan: you decide what each category gets, then see what actually happened. An expense tracker starts from the log: you record spending as it happens, and the totals, limits and monthly view appear. Tally is the first kind, Outlay the second — and in Pro, Tally has a transactions log too, so the line between them is thin.
Both workbooks are formulas, named ranges and conditional formatting. Nothing runs on open, nothing needs enabling, both files open in Google Sheets and Numbers. The Pro workbooks include a sheet that explains every calculation — what SUMIFS is filtering on, why there’s an IF before a division, where the ranges stop.
What the free version includes
The core sheet, working, with a credit line kept at the bottom. Pro adds the remaining sheets — logs, monthly and yearly views, limits, Setup — and a formulas walkthrough.