Templates › Monthly Budget Planner

Paycheck & zero-based monthly budget spreadsheet

Tidy Sheets' Monthly Budget Planner is a paycheck budget spreadsheet for Google Sheets and Excel: a zero-based monthly budget you can run from each paycheck. Price: $5.99. You get the blank template, an example copy and a printable PDF pack.

$5.99 · Google Sheets + Excel (.xlsx) · printable PDF

Buy on Whop · $5.99

One-time purchase, no subscription. Checkout is on Whop; the files are in your Whop library straight after payment, and the download stays open for 12 months.

What it does

• Give every dollar a job: "Left to assign" counts down to 0
• Pick any month: budget vs spent per category, with a chart
• Year view: income, spending, savings rate for all 12 months
• 500 transaction rows with category drop-downs
• Works in Google Sheets and Excel; any currency

What zero-based budgeting means

Zero-based budgeting gives every unit of income a job before the month starts: bills, groceries, savings, debt, fun. Income minus all budgets should equal 0. Nothing is "left over" by accident; leftover money is assigned to savings or debt on purpose.

How to budget by paycheck

1. Write down what you expect to earn this month from each paycheck or income source.
2. List fixed bills first (rent, utilities, insurance, minimum debt payments).
3. Add variable spending (groceries, fuel, eating out) using last month's real numbers.
4. Assign what is left to savings goals or extra debt payments until "Left to assign" reaches 0.
5. Log spending as it happens and check budget vs spent once a week.

Common mistakes

• Forgetting irregular yearly costs (car insurance, gifts): add them as monthly sinking funds.
• Budgets that ignore last month's real spending.
• Never reviewing: a budget only works if you compare it with what you actually spent.

What's inside

• Start Here
• Setup (income + up to 30 categories)
• Transactions (500 rows)
• Monthly dashboard with budget-vs-spent chart
• Year view with savings rate

Tested before listing

Recalculated in LibreOffice with zero formula errors, and the example numbers were re-computed independently in Python and matched (50 of 50 checks across the line, 2026-10-14).

Last updated 2026-10-14.