Budgeting Tool with Numbers + Shortcuts


Author: Rahul Krishna

The Case for Default Applications


Simple default applications often surpass complex specialized solutions due to their ease of use, efficiency, and reliability. They offer a user-friendly experience, are optimized for common use cases, and prioritize simplicity and functionality, making them more efficient and effective for everyday tasks.

Prerequisite


Numbers Icon
Shortcuts icon

What do we expect from Budget?


Budget Sheets

The proposed budgeting tool will incorporate two distinct sheets: a ‘Budget’ sheet for resource allocation and a ‘Transactions’ sheet for recording financial transactions. The ‘Budget’ sheet is intended to be established at the commencement of each month, with subsequent modifications primarily occurring within the ‘Transactions’ sheet. It is anticipated that updates to the ‘Transactions’ sheet will automatically reflect in the ‘Budget’ sheet, ensuring real-time accuracy of the budgeting data.

Doing this in Numbers


Fortunately, all these functionalities are incorporated within a pre-constructed default template in Numbers, providing a seamless user experience.

New Sheet

Let’s proceed to validate the functionality of this process:

On to the Shortcut


Upon mastering the utilization of Shortcuts, one can truly comprehend the immense capabilities inherent within the iOS operating system. It essentially integrates the functionality of IFTTT directly into the operating system itself.

Below is the shortcut designed to append a transaction to the sheet:

Shortcut

Link to Shortcut

Before Test


Here are the screenshots of cleaned up Numbers sheet before we start adding Transactions

Cleaned Numbers

Cleaned Transactions Sheet

Shortcut in Action on macOS


Shortcut in Action - iOS


References


This project is maintained by rahulakrishna on GitHub. You can find me on Mastodon @_thisdot@mastodon.social