Setting up a Monthly Budget Planner for each month is crucial to keep track of your finances and assess how your spendings can be controlled to stay within a budget.
In this post, we will see how you can use the Notion Monthly Budget Planner to stay within your budget and manage your finances like a pro đź’Ş
We just need to go through 1 simple step, i.e. entering transactions to start planning for our monthly budget and gain control over our finances right away…
But before that it’s important to understand how Notion Monthly Budget Planner operates to know more of its features.
Overview of the Notion Monthly Budget Planner
1. Expenses Overview
Expenses Overview, shows the different categories of expenses that have been added by us.
For each added expense, this shows the “Total Expense Amount” (highlighted in red) and “Total Budgeted Amount” (highlighted in green).
Then we also have a quick percentage indicator which shows how much we have spent as compared to the budgeted amount set for the category of expense.
If the actual expenses are less than the budgeted expenses, then it indicates “Under Budget” (in green) and if the actual expenses are more than the budgeted expenses, it indicates “Over Budget” (in red).
This will be updated instantly as you enter the transactions related to the expenses incurred.
2. Monthly Overview
Monthly Overview shows the Budgeted Expenses, Actual Expenses incurred, Percentage of actual expenses incurred and the overall status for each month.
This helps you give a quick overview of how much you have saved and how much you have overspent as per different categories of expense categories for different months.
This will be updated instantly as you enter the transactions related to the expenses incurred.
3. Yearly Overview
Yearly Overview shows the Budgeted Expenses, Actual Expenses incurred, Percentage of actual expenses incurred and the overall status for every year.
This helps you give a quick overview of how much you have saved and how much you have overspent as per different categories of expense for each year.
This will be updated instantly as you enter the transactions related to the expenses incurred.
4. Summary
Finally under Summary, we can get a yearly overview of all the expenses created so far.
This shows Expenses Amount (in red), Budgeted Amount (in green), Percentage of Budgeted Expenses incurred and an indicator to show if it’s “Under Budget” or “Over Budget”.
This will be updated instantly as you enter the transactions related to the expenses incurred.
How to download the Notion Monthly Budget Planner
Click Here to download Notion Monthly Budget Planner.
Now let’s see how you can use the template.
Entering Transactions to the Notion Monthly Budget Planner
The only step you need to follow to start using the template is to enter transactions into the “Expense Details” section which will help keep you updated with monthly budgeting.
In the “Expense Details” view, we have the following properties to enter an expense transaction.
1. Date
Enter that Date of Expense in this field. Clicking on this field opens up the date window where you can enter the date of transaction.
2. Expense Details
Enter the details of an expense in the Expense Details section. While entering the expense details we need to understand 2 things:
1. Budget Amount
At the start of each month we need to enter the Expense Category in the Expense Details for which we are setting up the budget and then specify the budget amount in the “Budget Amount” section.
So this property is to be used to set up a budget for each expense category at the start of the month.
As an example, we have entered “Food” in the “Expense Details” section on Feb 1,2024 for Feb 2024 month, and then define the same name (i.e. Food) in the category property.
Then we have defined the “Budget Amt” in the “Budget Amt” property to set the Budget Amount for the Food category.
2. Expense Amount
In this field, we can enter the expense amount for each added transaction with the specific details of the transaction.
As an example, we have entered “Wi-Fi Bills Payment” for Feb 2024 and we have entered the expense amount under the expense amount.
In the category we can specify the category to which the expense related to such as “Utilities” for the “Wi-Fi Bills payment” related expense.
So this property is to be used to add expense for each type of transaction.
3. Period
Here we can define the period of the expense, such as Feb 2024 for the expenses booked under February.
You can add a new period by simply clicking and typing the period as desired.
4. Year
Here we can define the year of the expense, such as 2024 for all the expenses booked for the year 2024.
You can add a new year by simply clicking and typing the year as desired.
5. Category
Here you can define the category of the expenses, for all the expenses booked during a period.
An example is defining a category as “Food” for the expenses booked related to Food related expenses.
6. Expense Code
Here you can enter the particular expense for the transaction booked. This will be unique for each category of expense in association to the year of expense as well.
An example is expenses for February in the Food category which can have a unique code “FOOD-FEB24”.
In this way, we can add the entire details of the expenses and book the expense transaction as required.
Read More : How to set up a Debt Payment Tracker in Notion
Adding a new Expense Category
In order to add a new expense category, you can click on “+New” on the right to start adding a new category of expense or you can click on already added expense categories to edit its details as well.
Summary
This template is super helpful and can be customized as per user’s needs to stay budgeted for each month.
Click Here to download and start using Notion Monthly Budget Planner right now.