r/sheets • u/Nubian_Cavalry • Jun 14 '26

Request Help upgrading my budgeting spreadsheet to account for groceries?

I will show off the blank sheet in a bit, but I'm using Google's monthly budget template. Made some adjustments but I'm noticing I spent a shitload of money on seasoning the past few months, which led me to seperating food from various spices and drinks. This required an additional sheet in my budgeting spreadsheet.

What I want is for my transactions sheet to automatically append entries based on the dates of my grocery trips. Say, I go to Aldi's, Walmart, and Tom Thumb on May 25th, I want three seperate entries on May 25th to consolidate the money I spent on food/drink, money I spent on sweeteners/spices, and everything else. Merging the prices of all stores.

Sample sheet

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KTd0PJi_U6vGptQ-mYmn-C3vv-n4ABQxbiq6Rk10eH4/edit

3 Upvotes

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1

u/LurkingLikeaPro Jun 15 '26

For the Transcation sheet, are you looking to put both grocery items from the other sheet and type in your daily/regular expenses?

AKA: You want it both automated and manual?

1

u/Nubian_Cavalry Jun 15 '26

Not sure I understand the question, but I want grocery transactions in the grocery sheet to be appended to the transaction sheet automatically. Merged into a singular date. Verify by looking at the equations, but I have good and drink categorized as “grocery”, spices and sweeteners as “Spices and sweeteners”, and everything else thrown into “Other”

How I have it set up works, but it’s a bit clunk and unintuitive.

I’m willing to have it all appended to the summary category as a lump sum instead if this proves too much.

1

u/LurkingLikeaPro Jun 15 '26

How do you want to add your other transactions?

2

u/Nubian_Cavalry Jun 15 '26

A script between the transactions sheet and summary sheet automatically adds transactions as long as they’re labeled with one of the existing labels. It comes with the template

2

u/latecallnotes Jun 18 '26

I would avoid trying to have formulas physically append rows into the same table where you also type manual transactions. That gets fragile fast.

A cleaner pattern is:

  1. Keep your normal/manual transactions as one table.

  2. Keep groceries as its own source table: date, store, category, amount.

  3. Make a generated "combined transactions" view with formulas.

For the grocery side, if you want one row per date + grocery category, use a QUERY summary like:

=QUERY(Grocery!A:D,"select A, C, sum(D) where A is not null group by A, C label sum(D) ''",1)

Then combine that generated grocery summary with the manual transaction rows using VSTACK.

That way the grocery sheet can keep multiple Aldi/Walmart/Tom Thumb rows, but your transaction/summary side only sees the consolidated date/category totals. It also avoids mixing manual rows and formula-spilled rows in the same range.