Can Numbers be Useful in Basic Bookkeeping?

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Level 1

8 points

Can Numbers be Useful in Basic Bookkeeping?

Once upon a time, I used Microsoft Money for my bookkeeping. It remembered my categories, totaled, remembered repeated payments and payees, Life was easy. Microsoft money is no more, and I have entered Apple-land with my iPad.

I have used Numbers for the past 2 years to keep track of my expenses, income, and HST in separate spreadsheets. I find it finicky and frustrating to use, if one has not been trained in Excel. And, it remembers nothing- so I am endlessly inputting the same information and redoing the same formulae, which makes me feel cross and murdery.

Income is divided into quarters on one spreadsheet and so, is easy to tally. EXPENSES are divided over 4 spreadsheets, 1per quarter (Jan-March, April-June, etc..)

Not knowing how to create CATEGORIES or keep a running total of the expenditure in each category, I sort of input them by category, and chronologically. (Making the bookkeeping a giant PAIN, btw.)

I now need to get an ANNUAL TOTAL of what I spent, by CATEGORIES, for use by my accountant. I would rather not have to use my adding machine to tally up every cell in every category. Instead of giving her 20 odd pages of bookkeeping to decipher, I need to give her a simple expense sheet with categories on one side and the year’s totals on the other.

There is apparently a way to do this, but all the explanations in this forum presume a lot of foreknowledge about Excel that I don’t have. I need an explanation that is not done only in Excel symbols. This is totally UNHELPFUL if one cannot understand the symbols.

Can anyone help me or direct me to instructions - using WORDS, in English, please?????

iPad Air, iOS 12

Posted on Apr 16, 2019 8:06 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

SGIII

Level 8

36,206 points

Apr 17, 2019 6:24 AM in response to Ymmy27

I need to give her a simple expense sheet with categories on one side
 and the year’s totals on the other.

Numbers is ideally suited for a task like this. Just a few clicks.

Say you have your more or less chronological list something like this (it doesn't really matter in what order). You would of course use your actual category names rather than A,B,C, etc.

All you have to do is click the column letter of the Category column and add a category.

Giving you this:

Then click the 'gear' icon and choose 'Subtotal

Giving you something like this:

Then, if you want, you can collapse the triangles to show just the totals.

Giving you this:

No Excel or spreadsheet knowledge really needed. No formulas. Just a few clicks and you're done in less than a minute.

SG

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Answer 2

Ymmy27 Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 17, 2019 8:41 AM in response to Kappy

Hi Kappy,

you might be right, but until I’m feeling flush enough to shell out for accounting software (I’ve looked but, it’s all crazy expensive), Brian at AplCaree walked me through a way to do what I need to do using the Organization Button to categorize and the Summary Button to total those categories. NO EXCEL formulae needed.

It’s still fiddly, largely because I have not been consistent in my data entry from one quarter to the next, or even within each quarter. And I have seriously over-thought things by putting each quarter on a separate spreadsheet. Being able to collapse categories and show category tallies, makes all that fuss unnecessary. I look forward to cleaning that up for 2019.

thanks for your input, though.

y

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Answer 3

Ymmy27 Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 17, 2019 8:52 AM in response to Yellowbox

Thanks for trying to help, Yellowbox,

I’d looked at those templates, but couldn’t get what they were trying to demonstrate. I couldn’t SEE THE WORK of how they got to the answer.

Fortunately, Brian at AplCare and SGIII below showed me a way to do what I wanted to do without a lot of impenetrable EXCEL language, simply by using the Organize Button (to categorize) and the Summary Button (to tally the categories). MAGIC! I took notes, because I probably won’t really remember until I’ve done it done it 1000 times. Still a bit fiddly because of my sloppy and inconsistent category entries, but I look forward to cleaning that up for 2019. I may well need to invest in proper accounting software, but Numbers will work for now.

y

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Answer 4

Yellowbox

Level 7

21,361 points

Apr 17, 2019 1:38 AM in response to Ymmy27

Hi Ymmy,

Welcome to the Numbers for Mac forum.

This is doable in Numbers. Take a look at Template Chooser > Monthly Budget. On the Budget Sheet, the table "SUMMARY BY CATEGORY" Column C (Actual) uses the SUMIF function to sum each Category (chosen by Pop-Up Menus on the Transactions Sheet).

That can easily be adapted to include income and expenditure over Categories and Dates by using the SUMIFS function (multiple comparisons).

Many functions in Numbers are the same as in Excel.

Regards,

Ian.

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Answer 5

Ymmy27 Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 17, 2019 8:34 AM in response to SGIII

Thank you, SGIII,

your response looks much like what I got from my telephone appointment with AplCare this morning.

”Brian” guided me through how to use the “Organization Button” (the funny circle enclosing the triangular column of dashes) to put things into categories, add categories, then use the summary button to total things up. I Hd to take notes as We worked, because it will take a while before it becomes second nature. I remain an EXCEL idiot, but it doesn’t really matter for what I want to do.

I still find it fiddly, but am excited about making it less so THIS year, by 1) cleaning up and being ruthlessly consistent with my names for things in my data entry, and by not over-organizing the expenses onto 4 spreadsheets. With the use of categories, I can compress and tally on one GIANT spreadsheet.

Still a tedious amount of work, but I can actually see myself finishing before fiscal year 2025. And, nice to not feel so murdery.

Thanks for your help.

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Answer 6

Kappy

Level 10

361,885 points

Apr 16, 2019 8:15 PM in response to Ymmy27

Buy accounting software. Numbers is only useful if you know what you are doing and how to program a spreadsheet to do it. Much better to buy software already designed for the purpose.

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Can Numbers be Useful in Basic Bookkeeping?

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