• expired

Personal Finance Tracker Spread Sheet $6 (Was $8) @ CompiledSanity Personal Finance

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Budgeting for Crowdstrike outages can be difficult, but with a good spreadsheet you too can avoid financial bluescreens.

This formula driven and automated net worth and savings tool has been really popular on OzBargain and reddit, and hopefully you'll enjoy it too! The sheet is made to help track monthly finances and provides a bird's eye view of your financial position each month. For example, I was able to see that if I had invested in NVIDIA in 2019 I wouldn't really need to track my investments anymore.

Changes since the last deal – many bug fixes per community requests including improvements to recording a month, super/live asset tracking, general usability improvements.

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CompiledSanity Personal Finance Templates
CompiledSanity Personal Finance Templates

closed Comments

  • +4

    ——

    FAQ #1: Why should I pay money for this?

    The sheet is heavily automated, has live pricing and is a one-off payment rather than a subscription. If you're really interested, feel free to join the subreddit where I take future feature suggestions (and have for the past two years) and other users can help you debug and get set up.

    FAQ #2: what permissions do I need to give and what information will you get off me?

    All information is fully self-contained within and never leaves the sheet.

    There are 2 versions of the sheet:
    - FULL: Sheet contains the full suite of automated features but requires some more expansive permissions as a result.
    - SLIM: Does not support email updates, calendar reminders or the migration feature but has more self-contained permissions for those privacy conscious.

    Further FAQs can be found here

    ——

    Wishing you all a happy tax refund and start to the new financial year!

  • +7

    To get myself that extra flat white in these trying financial times I’ll forgo this one and use the free tools here https://moneysmart.gov.au/budgeting

    • +4

      Without checking either, what are the odds government budgeting tools are better than one developed over two years by someone with a genuine interest. Pretty slim?

      • Saying pretty slim is a very big stretch.

  • +2

    I use this already and its a great tracker to visualise your finances

  • +17

    I've used this for a long time and it's great - one question though.

    How do I code the CFMEU kickbacks I've been receiving? Is it income or just a gratuity?

  • +2

    Last time Ipaid and privided payment refrence but never received the product
    Since I overlooked couldnt claim through PayPal
    I dont trust this business

    • Hi Wiser, sorry that you didn’t receive this sheet and it very much isn’t the norm. Can you please PM a copy of your email or receipt ID so I can sort this out for you?

      • +2

        This was provided last time and you never responded.
        Anyway I have retracted my neg.

        • +20

          This seems to be an unfair attack on a historically very popular deal that has helped many others on Ozbargain.
          Quick search shows that they did reply to you publicly on the previous deal.
          Your experience has been negative so it's fair for you to take this stance. I do want to provide visibility on how popular these deals have been for others.

        • Hi Wiser, I just sent you a PM to try and resolve this for you.

          • +1

            @CSPersonalFinance: I have also had similar issues to Wiser. I would stay clear.

            • +1

              @soljah1993: Hey soljah1993, please send me a PM and I will manually send you the email now. Apologies for the delay, I’ll sort this out ASAP for you.

              • @CSPersonalFinance: You have two messages to respond to. You previously said the same and did nothing.

                • +1

                  @soljah1993: I’ve just replied to your messages and sent through to your new inbox as requested. Apologies for the delay.

  • +4

    I own this. Bought last time.

    1. You have to put the time in to update things or it's pretty useless.
    2. Importing your old data from random things is painful, not the spreadsheets fault, it's just slow.
    3. Duplicating data. It's already happened, in an external thing, why do I have to put it here also….

    It's a great tool if you want to have a play, if you want to do something regularly, it's a time sink, look for an automatic tool.

    I don't regret buying it, and have recommended it to others, but I no longer use it.

    • What do you use now? I'm in the process of setting up a google sheet to track my numbers now. Curious if there's a good automated alternative out there?

      • +1

        If you're just starting out with setting up a spreadsheet, this is a good choice to use for $6. There is a free version for you to get a taste of it first too.

      • Personally I pay for Pocketsmith. I've got on their last 2 BF deals and paid something around $85 per year. It's truly amazing - automated bank feeds (most using Open Banking so no (in)secure scraping, net worth tracking, forecasting, budget planning. It's something I check every day.

        • Amazing!

        • I'm currently evaluating and close to paying for a subscription to PocketSmith. So far it looks like you need to do some initial set up with categorisation, and importing of bank feeds to customise the dashboards to my liking - then once that's done, I believe it's a case of monitoring and fine-tuning your expenses.

          • @meistro: Yeah, pretty much. There's a bit of a learning curve and some quirks but you figure that out as you go. Tinkering with rollover settings and budgets will take a while to figure out, after 6 months or so we had it at a point we're comfortable with. Me and my partner review our spending on the first of every month, it's a nice activity to do together and the pie graph you can add as a widget to the dashboard does a good job of laying it out nicely. We fine-tune our budgets every year after looking at the cashflows report for the year.

            • @j1nx: @j1nx nice one, that's a nice approach on staying on top of finances. I also didn't realise that rollover's were a thing. Thanks.

        • Wait you pay $85 a year??!

          • @sauce2k: Dec 2022 I paid $69.27, Dec 2023 I paid $83.97. The first time I took up the BF offer, the second time their support was so kind to apply the BF code to my account.

            • -1

              @j1nx: sorry i meant to say that’s pretty exxy even for $85 for a tracker

        • Does pocketsmith require you to hand over banking login credentials to work?

          • @dda: If your bank supports open banking you can authenticate securely using that. Otherwise if not, yes you do as it would only be able to work by scraping. Who do you bank with?

            • @j1nx: Thanks, that's helpful. Couple different ones but main is NAB

              • @dda: Fairly certain NAB support open banking, the big ones do these days.

  • +1

    This is an awesome spreadsheet (jsut going off the screenshots on your website)! Well done. Well worth the $6 once-off cost imo.

    I am about halfway setting up something similar and am wondering if I just ditch it and use yours haha.

    Question - how do you treat inputting expenses? That's the hardest part imo. I currently dump CSVs of all my bank accounts into a single tab then use a script to categorise them (might switch to using a sql query though, would likely be much faster)

    • I also have trouble with the budgeting and closing the feedback loop on predicted vs actual. If anyone has a workflow or suggestions it would be greatly appreciated!

  • Any ability to integrate open banking feeds to this sheet?

    • +3

      Not currently, but it’s on my roadmap. Just figuring out a way to do this sustainably due to costs involved and wanting to keep this as a packaged sheet.

  • Its been great to use over past year for me. Only thing i wish was better was having PPOR and offset and making it easier to not double up offset $ and bank $

    • +7

      Glad to hear it! In the next version (v2.14) I’m overhauling the entire logic of how offsets are handled. This should streamline how you visualise balance separately to your cash balance.

  • Hi, does this come in excel form or only google sheets?
    Also, is there a video showing the different features?

    • +1

      It’s a Google Sheet due to the extensive scripts behind the scenes for automation and reporting.

  • Is it a subscription, or outright purchase?

    • Outright

    • +2

      It’s an outright purchase, and future updates are included in the price. I update the sheet quite regularly with new improvements.

  • +1

    @CSPersonalFinance can you provide a brief explanation on what the included API scripts do?

    I'm always wary about scripts and would just like to understand it more within this context.

    Ozbargain community - I assume that historically this product has been well received so the scripts have never been an issue?

    • The APIs in the sheet are just to use pricing provided by Yahoo/Morningstar/FT.com. As they are considered external as they don’t use Google Finance, it requires that extra permission.

      Additionally, I have this in my FAQ:

      This sheet has been designed with privacy in mind. For the sheet to run, no personally identifying information or sensitive information such as passwords/usernames are needed nor requested. The only inputs into this Sheet are holdings and amounts, the minimum information needed to determine your net worth & associated performance.

      Furthermore, there are 2 versions of the sheet - Full and Slimmed.

      The Full version contains all the features on offer in the Sheet, but as such requires some additional permissions to complete these tasks.

      The Slimmed version has been designed to be more private and self-contained, but as a trade off has had some features removed to not require additional permissions.

      You will receive a link to both versions to download in your email invite.

  • +1

    Does this support zero based budgeting?

  • +1

    Like a few others here, bought this a few years back. Great product for the price. Yes, a bit of set up, and updating as you need, but that would be same for similar things, (don't know about PocketSmith, haven't used that). Kudos to Dev.

    • Thanks for the kind words!

  • +3

    I bought this last time and don't recommend it for anyone with ADHD. People with ADHD need object permanence, you're not going to remember to open this clunky spreadsheet and update it regularly. You're better off using an app designed for smartphone. I'm currently using Cashew, which is a free budgeting app, that gently reminds me everyday to track my expenses. It's obviously not as feature complete as this spreadsheet, but it's useable which is more important to me.

    When is the app coming CS?

    • +1

      Very helpful with the ADHD perspective! Thanks.

    • thanks I have ADHD too. I'll try Cashew

    • what about a free spreadsheet alternative to cashew?

      • the problem is the spreadsheet. I've use this as an app!

  • *Crowdstrike

  • +2

    I've been using this since the last deal. I would say it's worth the price for me - I like being able to see the changes over time. It will take some months until you have enough data for it to be interesting. I don't think it's much work, once you set up it's just a monthly update.

    • +1

      Yeah I agree, I've been using it for about two years now and it's very nice to look at the history and see how I am tracking. Takes maybe 5-10 minutes a month to update.

      Well worth the once off $6 if you can commit to actually filling it in regularly, but if you expect it to be your financial advisor and make you better off financially, you'll be let down.

      • How did you find it helpful?

  • -1

    Got this from last time (months ago) but havent got a chance to use it

  • I purchased this previously on OzBargain, but I did not realise that I needed a Google account, as I am anti Google, I guess there is no way of using this?
    I have asked this before and have never received a reply.

    • Yep, you need a Google account. You could just create a burner account or get someone with an account to create the sheet for you and share the link for anonymous usage.

  • hey @CSPersonalFinance, I have purchased this earlier, how so i access it now??

    • You should receive an email within a couple of minutes. If you haven’t, please send me a PM and I will sort it out for you asap and manually send you the invite.

      • I recieved email but the file is view only mode? How can i add entries. Its doesn't let me?

  • +1

    Can you make a video guide on how to use the spreadsheet?

  • +1

    ATTENTION,

    I would like to advise caution when considering purchasing software access from the following company. After encountering their advertisement on Ozbargain, I procured their software last year, but I did not receive any email confirmation. Despite reaching out to them via private messaging on Ozbargain, their request for my PayPal ID went unanswered, as did my subsequent follow-up message. Consequently, I incurred a loss of $6. I possess evidence of my attempts to communicate with them and their lack of response.

    • +1

      Hi there kulvinbartia, thanks for your message. Please know this is not the norm - the vast majority of users on previous deals have received their sheet, as well as on the Reddit forum.

      Due to the keywords of the email, sometimes the sheet can be picked up by spam filters, in particular iCloud and sometimes Hotmail which is more aggressive. Gmail is usually fine.

      My intention is for all invites to be delivered, and for users to have orders fulfilled and to be satisfied. If you haven’t received an invite, I encourage you and any other users experiencing this to email me at [email protected].

      The above email is an actively monitored inbox, as opposed to Ozbargain private messages which I try and check in when I can. If you could send me any details of your purchase I will resolve this for you ASAP (as I have done for users above). I will then manually send you the invite.

      Again, I am an open and transparent author. I want to resolve these issues and actively engage with the community. If you are missing the sheet I will resolve this asap. Please see other users feedback to see that the majority are receiving this sheet.

  • +1

    It's a great spreadsheet with a lot of features but would only recommend to someone who is already passionate about managing their finances, as it is quite overwhelming and fairly clunky. Others have pointed out it's not adhd friendly, and I have to agree.

  • Could this replace Reckon Personal Plus?

  • I used a butchered version of the slim spreadsheet for a while, and then paid for the full version last time around.

    I find it easy to use, I update figures on a regular basis. I also have added extra sheets to it for some additional tracking (eg modelling super balances monthly against a target, ditto with home loan and offset).

    There are a few quirks, I don't "get" the fire/retirement page, some etfs don't show due to google finance (FEMX, GGUS), however as a whole it is a great tool.

  • Hi all, just FYI the deal is due to expire tomorrow night.

    Just for those who have questions going forward - if you have any issues please email [email protected].

    This is the preferred way to provide support as the Ozbargain inbox isn’t being checked between deals (this is what caused some confusion last time, so using this message to now sign off).

    Happy financing all and hope you’re enjoying the sheet!

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