Percentage of Budget Used

How It Works

Dividing spent amount by budget gives you a decimal that represents the percentage used. Format as percentage to see how much of your budget remains.

Syntax

=spent / budget

Or for display: =TEXT(spent/budget, "0%")

Example

Category	Budget	Spent	% Used
Groceries	$500	$325	65%
Dining	$200	$180	90%
Entertainment	$150	$45	30%
Gas	$200	$210	105%

Formula in D2: =C2/B2

Format column D as percentage (Format → Number → Percent).

Progress Tracking

Pace Check

Are you on track mid-month? Compare percent of budget used to percent of month elapsed:

=spent/budget - DAY(TODAY())/DAY(EOMONTH(TODAY(),0))

• Negative result: Under budget (good)
• Positive result: Spending too fast

Visual Progress Bar

Create a simple text-based progress bar:

=REPT("█", MIN(10, ROUND(C2/B2*10))) & REPT("░", MAX(0, 10-ROUND(C2/B2*10)))

Result: ██████░░░░ (60% used)

Color Coding with Conditional Formatting

Make overspending obvious:

1. Select the % Used column
2. Format → Conditional formatting
3. Add rules:
   • Less than 0.75 → Green
   • Between 0.75 and 1 → Yellow
   • Greater than 1 → Red

Variations

Remaining Budget

Show what’s left instead of what’s used:

=(budget - spent) / budget

Or in dollars: =budget - spent

With Planned vs. Actual

For comparing planned spending to what actually happened:

=actual / planned - 1

Positive = over plan, Negative = under plan

Category as Percent of Total

What portion of total spending is each category?

=category_spent / SUM(all_spent)

Dashboard Summary

Create a quick budget health check:

Metric	Formula
Total Budget	=SUM(Budget)
Total Spent	=SUM(Spent)
Overall %	=SUM(Spent)/SUM(Budget)
Categories Over	=COUNTIF(PercentUsed, ">100%")
Categories Under 50%	=COUNTIF(PercentUsed, "<50%")

Pro Tips

1. Check weekly - catching overspending early gives you time to adjust

2. 80% warning threshold - when a category hits 80%, slow down spending there

3. Track patterns - consistently hitting 100%+ means your budget may be unrealistic

4. Separate fixed vs. variable - fixed expenses should always be 100%; focus on variable categories

Common Errors

• #DIV/0!: Budget is $0 or empty - use =IFERROR(spent/budget, 0) to handle
• Shows decimal instead of %: Format the cell as Percentage
• Over 100% shows as error: This is correct! It means you overspent