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Proledge
June 17, 2025
For some, doing your own bookkeeping sounds terrifying, while for others it is something that only experienced bookkeepers or accountants do. But, the reality is that anyone can learn to do it. It is a simple process and you don’t have to be a professional to learn how to do it. Technology is helpful and plays an important role and with the help of an Excel bookkeeping template you will have your financial data under control in no time. This article talks about how you can start your own bookkeeping in Excel and what you need to do.
According to Corporate Finance Institute, bookkeeping “involves the recording, on a regular basis, of a company’s financial transactions and with proper bookkeeping, companies are able to track all information on its books to make key operating, investing, and financing decisions”.
In simpler terms, bookkeeping is the process of recording all the money that comes in, either regarding your business or your personal financial situation and all the money that goes out. Bookkeeping allows you to know your financial data in real time. It allows you to be organized, knowing your financial situation, to be prepared in case of a financial control and of course it allows you to make good and smart decisions for your business.
With the help of bookkeeping, you know how much money you have, how much money you owe, how much money you spend or how much you will receive in the future. So, knowing this information is very important because based on your financial situation, you can decide what to do. For example, you can decide if you want to invest in something, you can decide if it’s time to apply for a loan or to hire more employees.
Bookkeeping allows you to see where your money is going and with the help of financial reports you can understand better your business. With bookkeeping, you have access to daily reports, monthly reports or weekly reports. In case you need to analyze specific financial data or certain transactions since two weeks ago or even a year ago, you can get those results. Also, you are prepared for financial controls or for audits and taxes.
There are some benefits if you want to try doing your own bookkeeping.
If you don’t have a big company or a large business, hiring professional bookkeeping services can be expensive. However, if you have a small business, you can try to do your own bookkeeping. You can save money and instead of paying specialists to take care of your financial situation, you can do it yourself. The fact that you do your own bookkeeping doesn’t cost you any money, on the contrary. Not only you get to save money, but you also have direct knowledge and information about your money and your financial situation.
You can contact us anytime if you have questions or encounter a problem with your bookkeeping program.
Another important benefit of doing this is that you don’t depend on others to send you reports or update you about specific records or transactions. You are in control and you don’t have to wait to receive a certain report because you can access it and find the information or transaction that you need. You have real time access to your financial information and you can check your data anytime you want it.
Also, professional services that don’t cost too much and are affordable mean that you will only get a weekly report or a monthly report. You can have access to extended services, but if you have a small business, paying too much for complete services might not be equitable since the money you pay for these services could be used to grow or develop your business instead.
Using an Excel bookkeeping template, you can do things more easily. You can see specific details and probably even patterns in your expenses or even your income. These details are important and practical and helpful because they allow you to observe any financial problems, issues or changes.
Having a clear understanding of your income and expenses and a clear picture of your spending habits you can establish if you need to make some changes or if you need to improve other aspects in your business. Trying to do your own bookkeeping should not be a hard process if you have the desire to learn and understand firstly your business and based on that, to decide what to do, for your interest and benefits.
There are four things that you need to have before you start your bookkeeping.
The first thing that you need to start doing your own bookkeeping is a computer. You can use a desktop computer or a laptop, as you prefer. Your computer has to have enough memory to run Excel, because with its help you will do your own bookkeeping.
Microsoft Excel is ideal if you want to start doing your own bookkeeping. It is helpful, complex, easy to use and it has all the formulas you need and it can do the math in your place. If you want to have another alternative, Google Sheets is available and free to use.
The most important tool that helps you and makes things easier is a good bookkeeping Excel template. The right template already has the columns, the categories and the formulas, all set up before. You only need to fill in and complete the spreadsheet with your numbers and financial details, transactions, dates, etc.
Finally, you can gather all your financial papers such as receipts, invoices, bank statements and other relevant or important documents that show when money went in and out. To make things even easier, you can scan all these documents and put them into different categories, ready to go through them and fill them in your bookkeeping spreadsheet.
You don’t have to add complex things or too much information. Keeping things simple and easy can save you a lot of time. You can do your own bookkeeping in a smooth way, by being organized and avoiding complex and detailed information.
Your spreadsheet should include information on dates. Each transaction has a certain date, showing you when it was made. Including the date in your spreadsheet is important because it allows you to track specific transactions. For example, if you want to see all transactions made on December 6th, you can do that if you want to and have already included a date column in your spreadsheet.
If you want to find other details of your transactions, you can include a description of your transactions in your spreadsheet. You don’t have to be too specific and you can write two to three words that can help you identify the transaction. For example, you can add a note to the transaction that you made on December 6th by adding “sold four shirts” or “bought office supplies”.
Also, you can include categories for your expenses or income. You can categorize your money based on certain categories, your choice. For example, you can have three categories that seem relevant to you or five categories that are important, such as Income, Marketing, Rent, Utilities, Office Supplies, etc. Here is where you might try and complicate things, by including too many categories. Just think about the most important ones for you and only keep those.
Finally, you can have another column with what comes in and what goes out. This might sound too easy or too simple, but in reality, this aspect is very. In and out shows the money that you earn, meaning your sales and your overall income and the money that you spend, meaning overall expenses.
The first thing you need to do is to open your template. You can use Excel or Google Sheets as we mentioned above, it is up to you to choose the template that you want. Then, you start to scan your financial documents. After you have all your documents ready or scanned in your computer, you start to enter all your transactions. You then add the dates of each transaction, the description that you want, so you can easily find the transaction based on that, the category and the amount, if it is an In amount or an Out amount.
After carefully completing the steps above, you will notice that your balance updates automatically and the formulas do the math for you. Having all the financial information completed allows you to analyze details, check expenses and observe sales and other things that you find important.
Checking your financial information daily, weekly or monthly is a matter of personal choice and you can do that each time you feel the need to verify if there are any changes in your financial situation. However, if you see that you are spending too much time on it, maybe you should ask for professional services.
Although you can try doing your own bookkeeping, our team recommends asking a professional to help you with that. In this way, you can prevent any errors and mistakes, including major errors that can cost you money and even affect your business. You don’t need to waste any time and resources, but instead, you can get in touch with us and let us help you with our professional services.
You can try to do your own bookkeeping with the help of a good Excel bookkeeping template. But, our team at Proledge can help you and make things easier for you, offering professional advice and support. You can contact us and receive our experts support.
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