Excel Wizards, Help!

[penguintroopers]

I'd like to update my excel game for our household budget. I've got a big sheet that's been working nicely for us, but is a little tedious with data entry as I have it sorted by categories, so each time I go through the checking account I have to move to the proper cell and enter. I'd like a big sheet where all I did was enter right on down the line and have everything copy itself into its proper category. I've figured out how to sort into lists (ex "groceries", "eating out", "personal spending"), but can't figure out how to get those amounts to transfer to where they belong.

Any advice?

[dandarc]

SUMIF() is your friend here.

Google Sheets Example:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rhiCS-jvV03vEkHI7dM9VGh62DEZa8P1GjizcKkcKn0/edit?usp=sharing

So you've got your transaction list in the first 3 columns, then you have a list of the categories in column E. Column F is where the magic happens.

=sumif(C$2:C$28,E2,B$2:B$28)

I believe the syntax is identical between sheets and excel on this one. First argument is the range to search - the "Categories" from your transactions. 2nd is the criteria - the category to match in the "Summed categories" list. Third argument is the range of numbers. Use the $ to fix the references on argument 1 and 3 so you can cut and paste.

[economista]

I'm not sure I understand your question. I interpreted it two different ways:

1) You have an expense that comes up a lot i.e. "Safeway" which is always categorized as groceries but you don't want to always have to choose groceries as the correct category. You can use V-Lookup to do this for you - just have another tab with the common expenses and what categories they go in.

2) You have the expenses, amounts, categories, etc laid out and want it to auto-total each category for you. You can do this with pivot tables. - I just saw someone else answered SUMIF for this scenario - that works too but I find pivot tables to be WAY easier for me than SUMIF.

Hopefully one of those two things are what you were asking?

[penguintroopers]

SUMIF is exactly what I was thinking! Thanks everyone.

[dandarc]

Pivot tables are pretty cool. Software developer, so I tend towards code-y solutions.

Added a pivot table in the example - really is easy now.

Wish Oracle would do a dynamic pivot without having to do XML or having to write your own dynamic SQL (or trusting that function you found on the internet) - would be very helpful at the day job.