Vacation Budget Spreadsheet

A trip budget usually breaks before you leave: the flights booked in January, the deposit paid in June. This workbook logs every expense against the trip it belongs to and turns the total into the one figure that lets you compare trips honestly.

What This Workbook Does

• A Trips tab with dates, number of travelers and a budget for each trip, with the number of days calculated.
• An Expense Log tab with one row per transaction, a category drop-down and the payment method.
• Actual cost against budget, a category rollup, and cost per person per day for every trip.
• Pre-trip spending recorded under the trip it belongs to, dated when it was paid.

Days are counted inclusively, so a Saturday-to-Saturday trip counts as eight days — the basis most people use when they describe a trip.

How to Use It

1. Set up each trip on the Trips tab first, with dates, travelers and a budget.
2. Log every transaction on the Expense Log tab, typing the trip name exactly as it appears on the Trips tab.
3. Choose a category from the drop-down; the rollup depends on it.
4. Record pre-trip spending under the trip it belongs to.
5. Read cost per person per day to compare a long, inexpensive trip with a short, expensive one.
6. Keep the file from year to year; after two or three trips the budget column becomes accurate.

What It Will Not Do

Only money that moved is recorded. Points, miles and rewards used for flights or hotels are not valued, so a trip paid largely with points will look much cheaper than the same trip paid in cash.