Google Sheets expense tracker or an app? A Philippine version
Building an expense tracker in Google Sheets in the Philippines? How to set one up in pesos, how to log from your phone, and when an app is the better tool.
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You found a free expense tracker template for Google Sheets, made a copy, and changed the dollar signs to pesos. It looked great on the laptop. Then you tried adding a jeepney fare on your phone while holding a bag, and the keyboard covered the row you were typing into. By Friday you had a note in your phone that said "food ~500?" and nothing in the Sheet.
Google Sheets makes a good free expense tracker in the Philippines if you keep it simple: one tab of transactions in pesos, dropdowns for category and wallet (Cash, GCash, Maya, bank), and a summary tab built with SUMIFS. Its weak point is entry on a phone, which you can fix with a linked Google Form. An expense tracker app is the better choice if you still find yourself batching entries, or if you would rather not build and maintain formulas at all. Plenty of people use both.
What a Google Sheets tracker does well
A spreadsheet is a fair choice, not a stubborn one. Before comparing it with an app, it helps to be clear about what you would be giving up.
It costs nothing. Google Sheets is free with a Google account, and most Android phones already have one. Personal use costs nothing, and there is no daily limit.
You decide everything. If you want a column for "paluwagan", a tab for the family's shared bills or a row that splits rent with a housemate, you add it. No app's category list will match your life as closely as one you wrote.
Sharing is built in. You can share one Sheet with your partner, a sibling abroad or the parent who manages the household budget, and everyone sees the same numbers. For a family that pools money, that alone can settle it.
It plans, not just records. Savings goals, "what if rent goes up ₱1,500 next year", a debt payoff schedule. Spreadsheets were made for this, and most expense apps don't try.
How to set one up in pesos
You don't need a downloaded template. Five columns and two tabs will outlast most templates, because you understand every cell.
- 1
Make a Transactions tab
Columns: Date, Amount, Category, Wallet, Note. One row per purchase, newest at the bottom. Format the Amount column as currency with the ₱ sign.
- 2
Add dropdowns
Use Data validation on Category and Wallet so you pick from a list. This stops "Food", "food" and "Pagkain" becoming three categories. A typical Wallet list is Cash, GCash, Maya and your bank.
- 3
Keep categories few
Eight to twelve is plenty: Food, Transport, Bills, Load and data, Rent, Household, Health, Family support, Personal, Other. You can split them later.
- 4
Make a Summary tab
List your categories down the side and months across the top. Each cell uses SUMIFS on the Transactions tab to add up that category in that month.
- 5
Add one chart
A bar chart of the Summary tab is enough to see which line is growing. Resist building a dashboard in week one.
If you are paid on the 15th and the 30th, add a Cutoff column (1st half, 2nd half) and sum by that too. It shows whether the second half of the month is always the tight one.
If you pay for things in another currency, such as a subscription billed in US dollars, Sheets has a GOOGLEFINANCE function that can look up an exchange rate. It's worth knowing it exists, but each conversion is one more formula to look after.
Fix the phone problem with a Google Form
The reason most Sheets trackers die is the same reason most of them start: it is easy to build on a laptop and awkward to update on a phone. Most spending in a normal day, the fare, the merienda, the load, happens with your phone in one hand.
A Google Form gets around that. You make a short form with the same fields as your Transactions tab, then link the form's responses to your Sheet. Each time you submit, a new row appears.
Build the form
Questions for Amount, Category (multiple choice), Wallet (multiple choice) and Note. The timestamp is added for you.
Link it to the Sheet
From the form's Responses tab, send responses to your spreadsheet. They land on their own tab.
Save the link to your home screen
One tap opens the form. Fill in four fields and submit.
Point the Summary at it
Change your SUMIFS to read from the responses tab instead of the one you typed into.
This works, and it is the single best upgrade to a Sheets tracker. It still has costs. The form needs a connection to submit, so a purchase made with no signal waits until later. Fixing a wrong entry usually means opening the Sheet anyway. And every new category has to be added in two places, the form and the dropdown.
Where an app is the better tool
An expense tracker app is built around the moment you pay. That is the part a spreadsheet, even with a form, is slowest at.
In Cashmonki, for example, you can type one sentence in Ask, like "lunch 180, load 50", and get back cards with the amount, category and date filled in. Nothing is saved until you confirm. For a longer bill, receipt scanning reads the merchant, amount, date and currency from a photo and suggests a category.
The setup you built by hand in Sheets also comes ready made. Cash, GCash and bank money can sit in separate wallets with their own balances. Category totals and charts with period comparison are there from the first entry. Spending in another currency is converted for you, across 30 currencies.
Entries are stored on your phone first, and manual logging works offline. Ask and receipt scanning need a connection.
Side by side
| Google Sheets | Expense tracker app (Cashmonki) | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free, with optional paid plans |
| Logging a jeep fare on a phone | Slow in the Sheet, fair with a Form | One sentence or a receipt photo |
| Cash, GCash, Maya, bank | A Wallet column you maintain | Separate wallets with balances |
| Category totals and charts | SUMIFS and a chart you build | Built in, with period comparison |
| Planning and "what if" | Anything you can model | Not the app's job |
| Other currencies | GOOGLEFINANCE formulas | 30 currencies with conversion |
| Reads GCash or bank history | No | No, never connects to a bank |
| Phones | Android and iPhone | iPhone only |
Neither one reads your GCash or bank transactions. In both, every entry is one you make yourself. The question is only how long each entry takes.
What each one costs
Google Sheets is free. Cashmonki is free too, with limits on a few things: three Ask messages and three receipt scans a day, up to two wallets and two recurring items, and no custom categories. Typing entries by hand, budgets and charts are not capped.
On the US App Store, Cashmonki Plus is $2.99 a month or $19.99 a year, and Cashmonki Pro is $6.99 a month or $39.99 a year. Pro comes with a seven-day free trial; Plus has none. The Philippine App Store may show a different amount. If you're weighing whether to pay at all, our guide to free expense trackers without a subscription goes through it.
A split that works for a lot of people
You don't have to pick a side. Use each one for what it's good at.
- 1
Capture in the app
Log purchases when they happen, in pesos, by sentence or photo.
- 2
Check weekly
Ten minutes on Sunday to fix categories and wallets.
- 3
Copy monthly totals into the Sheet
About ten numbers a month, typed on a laptop, not 300 rows on a phone.
- 4
Plan in the Sheet
Savings goals, shared family costs and next year's rent stay where you have full control.
For the general case beyond the Philippines, our comparison of budget apps and spreadsheets goes deeper on control, ownership and privacy.
Where each one breaks
A Google Sheets tracker is wrong for you if you have already built one and stopped within a month, if almost all your spending happens on your phone, or if fixing a broken SUMIFS sounds like a chore you will put off.
An app is wrong for you if your household wants one file that everyone can open and edit, if you need a calculation no app offers, or if you're on Android. Cashmonki is iPhone only.
Cashmonki specifically won't connect to GCash, Maya or any bank, so nothing is imported for you. It won't let you write formulas or design your own reports. Its Ask and scanning limits are daily, so a busy day can use them up, though manual entry still works after that.
So which one
If your Sheet is up to date this week, keep it. Add a Google Form if entry is getting slow, and don't let anyone talk you out of something that works.
If you're here because the Sheet stopped at row 30, a better template probably won't help. The fix is making each entry cheap enough to do at the counter. Try an app for that part for a month, keep the Sheet for planning, and see which one you're still opening at the end of it.
Common questions
Yes. Google Sheets is free with a Google account. A tracker needs one tab of transactions (date, amount, category, wallet, note) and one summary tab that adds up each category by month with SUMIFS.
Make a short Google Form with the same fields and link its responses to your Sheet. Each submission becomes a new row, so you never scroll or tap into cells on a small screen. The form needs a connection to submit.
Add a Wallet column with a dropdown of Cash, GCash, Maya and your bank. Sheets will not read your GCash history, so you type each payment yourself, the same as cash.
It is better for control, sharing and planning, and it costs nothing. It is worse at the moment you pay, on a phone, when you need to record something in seconds. A common split is an app to capture and a Sheet to plan.
Keep the Sheet for planning. Log the jeep fare in one sentence.
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On a computer? Scan with your iPhone camera.