To speed this process up a bit, you can start by downloading an Excel copy of your bank or credit card transactions. You can get the amazing tracking template I use for my business below. A Tax Tracker takes your raw transactions and generates a Profit and Loss statement (also referred to as an Income statement) to be updated regularly like a budget tracker. Don’t get me wrong, detail is great in understanding where your money is going, but when it comes to actually doing your taxes it’s just an unnecessary added step. Unfortunately, both of these are very labor intensive.Īnother issue that plagues traditional budget spreadsheets is matching categories up with lines that are on your income tax return at the end of the year. Either you are adding multiple numbers in one cell and triple checking you keyed them in correctly, or you are creating a detail spreadsheet from your PDF bank statement. While a basic budget spreadsheet is great, it is a rather manual process to prepare. You can add up all of your income and expenses in one place and be well prepared to drop your final numbers into your tax prep software. Take your budget spreadsheet to a whole new levelīudget spreadsheets are a great way to keep track of your finances.
#HOW TO USE MICROSOFT EXCEL FOR PERSONAL FINANCE HOW TO#
I’m going to give you some tips and tricks on how to do taxes in Excel, including a free tax tracker template you can download and start using right away. At the end of the day I have a small amount of time to wrangle with my own taxes, and I’ve tackled this challenge in the most accountant way possible with Excel. I spend a busy tax season helping my clients get control of their finances, managing the steady stream of bank statements, receipts, and mileage logs. Tax Time.Īs a CPA, the first and last thing on my mind is taxes.