Have you ever wished you had a way to set up and automatically track a budget for one event? Like a birthday party or a family reunion or an office Christmas party? Or how about just your Christmas budget for the year?
I stumbled upon this need for a single-event budget and calculating spreadsheet two weeks ago as I planned my son’s 15th birthday celebration. After checking online, I found that many of the free single-event online budgeting tools, such as Christmas budget worksheets, are simply fill-in-the-blank-by-hand spreadsheets which you have to print in order to use.
Did I say my son turned fifteen? Yes, I know! That’s a big deal!
He wanted to invite over some of his friends and their moms to eat homemade flammkuchen (a German pizza we had tried and loved last summer in Germany). My son loves foreign languages and travel. And this year in school, partially because of that two-week visit to some close family friends in Germany, he’s studying not only French but German!
Anyway, he also wanted a ten-mile bike ride for his birthday. At night no less: on Hines’ Parkway, cycling through the spectacular Christmas lights that have just been put up here in Metro-Detroit.
So there we were one night last week: My son, and four of his Boy Scout friends, whipping down the parkway at top speed, and three of us moms barely hanging on, huffing and puffing, bringing up the rear! A lot of thoughts cascaded through my mind: the need for a systematic exercise regimen for me; how grateful I was for our Scout troop and home school community; and how glad I was that it wasn’t pouring rain!
But the last thought that occurred to me was like a light bulb going off in my head: people need a way to budget and track single events! This is one reason I decided to offer for free one module, the Big E-Z Cash&Charges Expense Tracker, a piece of my 2012 Big E-Z Bookkeeping system.
This was perfect for a single event like his birthday party. I had a budget and I had the real costs: the groceries, the entrance fees, the party favors, the decorations, the soft drinks, and the presents. After taking five minutes to enter the budgeted items, and the actual amounts from my receipts, I was able to come up, at the flick of a wrist, with the totals and the differences.
How cool is that?
For an even larger event, like an anniversary or a wedding, the free Big E-Z Cash&Charge Expense Tracker is even better. I can put in the budgeted amounts to start with and my bank balance; I then add in all the expenses as they accrue, break them down over 25 main categories or even 100 subcategories; and lastly, I can keep track of the difference between what I’ve budgeted for each category and subcategory! Perfect!
So, enjoy this Big E-Z Christmas gift to you! And let me know of any budgeting problems you’ve run into. Maybe I can help.
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