Ledger Sheets

A 50/30/20 Budget Tracker in Google Sheets, Formula by Formula

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The 50/30/20 rule splits take-home income into needs, wants, and savings/debt, roughly in a 50%, 30%, 20% ratio. Whether that split fits your situation is a separate question. What it gives a spreadsheet is three categories to tag transactions against and measure against a target, and that’s what this post builds.

Sheet layout

Two tabs: Transactions for raw entries, Summary for the rollup. Add a transaction and nothing else needs to change, because the formulas live on a different tab.

A Simple ROI Calculator in Google Sheets: NPV, IRR, and Payback Period

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Most “ROI calculator” templates floating around are a single cell dividing gain by cost. That works for a one-time, single-period return, but it falls apart the moment you have cash flows spread across multiple months or years, because it ignores when the money actually shows up. This post builds a small calculator that handles multi-period cash flows properly using NPV, IRR, and a payback period formula, and explains what each one is actually computing.

About

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Ledger Sheets covers spreadsheet templates and formulas: budgets, freelance invoicing and expense tracking, loan amortization, break-even and ROI calculators. Google Sheets and Excel.

Posts here explain how a formula or template works. They don’t tell you what to do with your money. Tax brackets, contribution limits, and interest rates change by year and by jurisdiction, so treat any such figures on this site as illustrative examples, not current fact. Check an official source before relying on a number for anything real.

Building a Break-Even Calculator in Google Sheets: Contribution Margin and a What-If Table

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Break-even analysis answers one question: how many units before revenue covers fixed costs. Building it in a spreadsheet instead of running the math once means you can change any input, price, cost per unit, fixed overhead, and see the break-even point move immediately. Nothing here is pricing or business strategy advice. Just the calculator and how to read it.

Setting up the inputs

Four inputs, each in its own cell so every formula below references them instead of hardcoding numbers:

Building a Loan Amortization Schedule in Google Sheets

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

An amortization schedule shows, for every payment period, how much of a fixed payment goes to interest versus principal, and what the balance is afterward. Sheets has three built-in functions for this. Whether a particular rate or term is a good deal depends on numbers specific to an actual offer, which this post doesn’t touch.

The three functions

Given a loan amount (principal), an annual rate (rate), and a term in months (term):

Freelance Invoice and Expense Tracker: A Two-Tab Spreadsheet That Scales

Fri, 07 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Freelancers need two things a generic budget spreadsheet doesn’t give them: a record of what’s been invoiced versus what’s actually been paid, and expenses sorted in a way that’s easy to hand off at tax time. What counts as deductible where you live is a question for a tax professional, not a spreadsheet post. This covers the tabs and the formulas.

Tab 1: Invoice log

Columns: Invoice #, Client, Date Sent, Due Date, Amount, Status (dropdown: Sent, Paid, Overdue).