How To Use Excel To Run Your Home

Step 1: Bill Management

Use SmartArt to fill it with colour and designs and it'll be nice to look at, as well as mathematically correct.
Set up rules so that if your outgoings are greater than your incomings your total box goes red, so you can see there's a problem. You can also set up rules so that if your telephone bill, for example, goes over a certain pre-defined limit, it'll get flagged and you know where to cut back for next month.
Formulas are easy to implement these days – just go to the formulas bit on the menu bar, and everything's practically done for you already. Select what you need and just fill it in.

Step 2: Event Management

If you've got a big event to plan, like a wedding, Excel can make the whole thing much easier. Keep it to one document, but use different sheets for different bills. One for reception, one for the outfits, one for the ceremony and one for the honeymoon.
Add comments to your data too, to help you keep track of things. Select where you're going to put a comment and go to Review-> New comment. This can be for things like the date you need to pay by, or what details you still need to confirm.
Use different fonts and background colours to get your spreadsheets as far away as possible from the traditional boring work spreadsheet look – that way, you'll be more inclined to fire it up and fill it in on a regular basis.

Step 3: Graphs

Select your data, go to Insert and turn it into a Pie chart or something. Or a nice graph! So much easier to understand than reams and reams and reams and reams and reams of numbers. It's probably time to stop being scared of Excel; little boxes with number in are OUT, colourful wazzo drawings are IN!
You can even drag bits of the Pie around to make it easier to see. The whole thing's just embarrassingly easy.


So use Excel to run your home. Set a specific time and date – like the first of each month- to fill it all in and keep up-to-date. It'll leave you with more time for the fun things in life...