A Budget Spreadsheet

 - In the small town of Evercrease, the Council managed to collect half a million pounds from its citizens. Unfortunately, the Council spent all of this, and another 69 thousand besides. Naturally, the good people of Evercrease objected to being asked for another 69 thousand pounds. So they got rid of the council and appointed a new one. Have a look at last year's budget, and see if you can do better. Here's the budget where the previous council overspent by 69 thousand pounds:

The final budget figure is in cell B33. It says minus £69 000. Your job is to construct the same budget as above, but making sure that you do not have a minus figure in cell B33. Otherwise, the people will fire you as well!

The first thing to do is to create the budget exactly as you see it above. When you have exactly the same figures as in the image, you can then start to amend things. For example, do you really need all those ducks and swans? What happens to your budget if you reduce the number of teachers from 5 to 4? Or the number of police cars from 4 to 2?

As soon as you make your reductions, you should see the figure in cell B33 change. At least it will if you have entered the correct formulas! Here's a little help on the formulas you need.

Budget Help

The first thing to do is to enter a figure of 500 000 in cell B1. This is the budget - how much is available to spend. You'll be referring to this figure in later cells. Then start on the budget sections.

The first section is Salaries. In the cells A4 to A9, enter the same labels as our image (Police Officers, Ambulance Drivers, etc). Enter the salaries in cells B4 to B9. In cells D4 to D9, enter how many of each are on the payroll. In cells F4 to F9, enter a formula to work out the cost of each profession. So 3 Police Officers multiplied by £16 000 is … ?

In cells B11, calculate the total cost of the salaries. In cell B12, calculate how much you have left to spend once the salaries have been deducted.

Do the same for the Equipment and Costs section. When you get to cell B22, you need to add the Salaries to the Equipment and Costs. Then you need to deduct your answer from the budget in cell B1. A combination formula will get you this.

The main calculations are in cells B32 to B36. For cell B32, calculate the total cost of the extras. For cell B33, this is just the Money Left. You then need to work out your Total Spending, how much you are spending each month. And the budget minus all those extras.

There is a lot of work to do with this spreadsheet. But completing it will bring your Excel skills on a lot!

In the next section, we'll move on to the inbuilt functions in Excel. First up are Averages.