Expense tracker template in Google Sheets

Keeping on top of your team’s spending is a key part of budgeting and business management. Rather than waiting to collect a pile of receipts at the end of the month (and possibly getting a nasty shock at how much money your employees have spent), it’s good to keep track of expenses over time.

Many small to medium-sized businesses don’t have a formal system for submitting and reimbursing expenses. Often, staff will simply submit a pile of paper receipts or send an email with an uploaded image attached.

For accountants, keeping track of receipts and reimbursements can be a nightmare. It’s more efficient to have all of that information centralized in one place, online. Although there are specialist expenses tools available for this, there’s no need to spend money on expensive dedicated software. Instead, consider Sheetgo’s free Expense tracker template in Google Sheets: one spreadsheet the whole team logs expenses in, with a dashboard that adds them up for you.

Why use Google Sheets to manage expenses?

• Flexible: Online spreadsheets allow you to create a versatile expenses submission and tracking system that’s customized to your business. You can adapt and expand the system over time, without any coding skills.
• Accessible: As Google Sheets is cloud-based, your colleagues can submit expenses from their laptop or mobile at any time, even when they’re on the road. Admin staff can process expenses quickly and easily, without any special software.
• Compatible with everything: Every piece of software integrates with Google Sheets. As a result, you can easily import data from other areas of the business, giving you everything you need in your Google Sheets.
• Easy to use: It’s likely that your entire team can already use spreadsheets so rolling out the system is straightforward. A Google Sheets expenses solution is future-proof and easy to maintain.

How to get started

Sheetgo’s Expense tracker template is one free Google Sheets file. You copy it to your own Google Drive, share it with the people who spend money, and each of them adds a row for every expense they need reimbursed. The Dashboard tab totals those rows and charts them, so you can see what the team is spending without asking anyone for a figure.

There is nothing to set up first: no software to add, no files to connect, and no Sheetgo account needed to use it.

What kind of template is this?

It is a single Google Sheets file. The expense log, the formulas and the finished charts all live in the same spreadsheet, on separate tabs. Copy it once and you have your own private version, pre-filled with sample data you can overwrite with your own figures.

One tab is for typing into — All expenses. Everything else is calculated from what you enter there, so you never have to write a formula yourself.

Working in a single spreadsheet gives you:

• One place for the whole team: because All expenses has a Team member column, everybody’s claims sit in the same table. There is no per-person file to chase and nothing to reconcile at month end.
• Scalability: adding a colleague means giving them access to the same spreadsheet, not building them a new one. Their name starts appearing in the charts as soon as they enter their first row.
• Integration: Google Sheets works well alongside other software, so you can bring figures in from a card statement or an accounting tool and paste them straight into the log.

The trade-off compared with a file per person is privacy between colleagues: anyone with edit access can see the whole table. If that matters for your team, use Google Sheets’ own sharing settings and protected ranges to control who can open and change what.

What you get with this template:

Copying the Expense tracker template saves one Google Sheets file to your Google Drive. Inside it you will find:

• Read me — a short guide to the file and the order to fill it in.
• All expenses — the log itself: one row per expense, with the date, a description, the invoice number, the amount, the type of expense, a link to the receipt, and the team member who paid.
• Dashboard — charts built from that log: expenses per day, per month, per type of expense and per team member, plus a box where you choose how many days of history to show.
• Automate this — what to do when you would rather not keep the file up to date by hand.

Two helper tabs, Data preparation and Accrual Period Table, are hidden. They hold the formulas that feed the dashboard, so you can leave them alone.

How to get your copy

Click the blue button below, then click Make a copy to save your own version to Google Drive.

1. Click Get the free template. The template opens in Google Sheets.
2. Click Make a copy.
3. Your copy is saved to your own Google Drive. Rename it if you like — it is yours to edit.

How the template works

Your copy arrives with sample data in it, so you can see how everything behaves before you commit to it. Click through the tabs along the bottom of the spreadsheet to get your bearings, then delete or overwrite the sample rows when you start using the file for real.

The Read me tab stays in the file, so you can go back to it whenever you need a reminder of how the pieces fit together.

How to use the Expense tracker template

Step 1: Share the file with your team

Open your copy and click Share in the top right-hand corner of Google Sheets. Give everyone who submits expenses Editor access so they can add their own rows.

If you would rather people could not touch the charts, select the Dashboard tab and use Data > Protect sheets and ranges to lock it, leaving All expenses open for editing.

Step 2: Colleagues enter their expenses

When a member of staff pays for something they need back, they add a row to the All expenses tab: the date, a short description, the invoice number, the amount, and the Type of expense from the dropdown. In the Link for the receipt column they can paste a link to a photo of the receipt they have uploaded to Google Drive. Last, they put their own name in the Team member column — that is the column that keeps everybody’s claims apart in the charts.

Step 3: Read the Dashboard

The Dashboard tab updates as rows are added to the log. It shows expenses per day, expenses per month, the amount per type of expense as a share of the total, expenses per individual, and expenses per month for each individual. There is also a space at the top left where you can drop in your company logo.

Step 4: Adjust the settings (optional)

The charts show the last 365 days by default. To change that, type a different number into the white box on the Dashboard tab that reads Bring data from the last … days.

The file arrives with a handful of expense categories in the dropdown: Air & Trans., Lodging, Fuel, Meals & Tips, Phone and Entertainment. To use your own instead, go to the All expenses tab, select the cells in the Type of expense column, open Data > Data validation, edit the list of items and save. The dropdown then offers your categories.

Adding more people to the tracker

Adding a colleague does not mean adding a file. Share the same spreadsheet with them, and have them type their name in the Team member column when they log an expense. From that point on they appear in the per-individual charts alongside everyone else.

If you would prefer names to be picked from a list rather than typed, treat the Team member column the same way as the expense types: select the cells, open Data > Data validation, and add each name to the list of items.

Build a complete accounting system in Google Sheets

Expenses are only one part of the picture. Once the tracker is running, pair it with the other free Sheetgo templates for Google Sheets — such as budget monitoring or cash flow — so you can see what you planned to spend next to what you actually spent.

The one thing a spreadsheet cannot do is fill itself in. Someone still has to add the rows and chase the receipts that never turn up. If that is the part you would rather hand over, the Automate this tab in the file introduces Owen, Sheetgo’s finance virtual employee, who picks up the expense and reconciliation legwork for you.

Frequently asked questions