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Monthly budget
Budget each category for the month, then watch actuals, rollover and a year of trends fill in beside it.
Best for
Your first budget, one household
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Google Sheets · Personal finance
Free Google Sheets Budget Template with a Monthly Dashboard
Give every category a monthly budget, then see what's left, what's over and how the year is going. Type your transactions in, or let Finta fill them in from your bank so you stop pasting in exports.
Free. No email. Works in any Google account. Opens a copy in your Drive.
Budget template
Dashboard tab
Sample data
Layouts
Pick the budget layout that matches how you think about money
Each layout has its own copy link. Start with Monthly if you are not sure, pick 50/30/20 if you'd rather check one simple split than budget every category, Envelope if you want every dollar to have a job before you spend it, Couples if you share some costs with a partner, or zero-based if you already budget in Notion.
Notion
Opens in Notion
Zero-based budget
The same idea in Notion, with income allocation and envelope balances.
Best for
People who already live in Notion
What's inside
Tab by tab
What each tab does and where its data comes from
Your budgets go on Categories, one amount per category per month. If you type your transactions in, those go on Transactions. Dashboard, Budget and Trends are formulas that read the four source tabs. Delete the sample rows before you start.
- Dashboard
- What's left to spend this month, budget vs spent by group, the categories running over and the latest transactions. Pick any month at the top.
- Formulas · read only
- Budget
- Every category with its budget, rollover, what you've spent and what's left, grouped under income, spending and goals.
- Formulas · read only
- Trends
- January to December. Income vs spending, the share of income you kept, and each category month by month, with the months that ran high shaded.
- Formulas · read only
- Start Here
- Four setup steps, the two ways to add transactions, and how to add these tabs to a spreadsheet Finta already syncs to.
- Guide
- Transactions
- Date, merchant, amount and category. Type them in, or let Finta write them.
- Finta · Transactions
- Accounts
- Every account with its type and current balance.
- Finta · Accounts
- Categories
- Your categories and where your budgets go. Each category gets a budget for each month, a type and a Rollover? box.
- Finta · Categories
- Bank Connections
- One row per bank you connect, with its last update. Only Finta fills this tab.
- Finta · Bank Connections
Setup
Three steps to your first month
Copy the template. It opens in your Google Drive with a year of sample data.
Delete the sample rows, then give each category a monthly budget on the Categories tab.
Type in your transactions, or connect Finta and pick this sheet.
Keep it updated automatically
Let Finta fill the source tabs
Connect your bank, choose this sheet, and Finta writes new transactions, balances and categories into the four source tabs on your bank's schedule. Dashboard, Budget and Trends update from them, and your budgets stay exactly as you set them.
Your bank connects through Finta to this sheet.
Tables to enable
- Bank Connections
- Accounts
- Categories
- Transactions
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7-day free trial. No credit card required.
Budget template questions
- How do I use this Google Sheets budget template?
- Copy it into your Google Drive, delete the sample rows, and type a monthly budget for each category on the Categories tab. Then add your transactions, by hand or by connecting Finta. The Dashboard, Budget and Trends tabs update on their own.
- Do I need Finta to use it?
- No. The template is free and works with transactions you type in yourself. Finta is optional. Connect it and new transactions from your bank land in the sheet as they post, so you stop typing them in. You can try it free without a card.
- How do I add categories and transactions?
- On Categories, add a row per category with an ID (the name works fine), a name, a group and a type (Income, Expense, Goal or Transfer). On Transactions, add a row per purchase or paycheck with an ID, date, summary, amount and category ID. Money out is negative and money in is positive.
- I already sync Finta to a Google Sheet. Can I add these tabs to it?
- Yes. In this template, right-click the Dashboard tab, choose Copy to, then Existing spreadsheet, and pick your Finta spreadsheet. Do the same for Budget and Trends. They read the Transactions, Accounts, Categories and Bank Connections tabs Finta already made, and the budgets in your Categories month columns show up right away.
- Does unspent money roll over to next month?
- Only where you tick Rollover? on Categories. For those categories, what you didn't spend in earlier months of the year carries into this month, and so does overspending. Every other category starts fresh each month.
- How does it handle credit card payments and transfers?
- Categories with the Transfer type, like Credit Card Payment and Account Transfer, are left out of spending. Paying your card bill doesn't count the same purchases twice.
- Can I keep using it in 2027?
- Categories has a budget column for each month of 2026. Add columns for the 2027 months to the right of December and the other tabs pick them up.
Free Google Sheets template
Copy the budget, then decide whether to keep pasting transactions
The template is free. The Finta trial is 7 days, no credit card required.