How To Do A Checkbook Register

Creating a Bank check Register With Excel

Excel Tutorial A frequent request received here at It's Your Money is, "Can you show me how to make my own bank check register in Excel?"

At present, I offer a free check-annals spreadsheet, an "Envelopes" Check Annals, and a fancier, for-pay check annals with sorting. The more I consider information technology, though, the more I recall that building a tutorial like this could exist a neat way to show Excel beginners some of the bones workings of the program.

Screenshots here will be from Excel 2007. Other versions of Excel will appear slightly unlike, but the functionality is essentially the same.

Step 1: Open a blank Excel spreadsheet.

Our outset item of business, of form, is to open up up a new, blank Excel spreadsheet. Typically you lot'd practice this from the START carte du jour:

The mouse-click sequence would exist:

START → PROGRAMS → MICROSOFT OFFICE → EXCEL

At that point, yous should have a blank Excel spreadsheet opened on your screen.

If you're non real familiar with Excel's layout, hither'southward what's of import: In Excel, "rows" run horizontally, and are ordered by number. "Columns" run vertically, and are ordered past letters:

Each box where a row and column intersect is chosen a "cell." In this screenshot, the "active" cell is B2 (Column B, Row two):

It'due south what you lot put in these cells — names, numbers, pictures, formulas — that makes spreadsheet programs like Excel work their magic ... as nosotros're about to run into!

Step two: Create Your Cavalcade Labels.

Once the blank spreadsheet (or "worksheet") is opened, nosotros'll starting time by adding a handful of cavalcade labels — the same ones you'd find in your paper cheque register. Let's starting time with cell B1 (that's column B, row 1). Enter the word "DATE" and then move right, to the next cell (C1). Enter "Item #" here. Then fill in the next five cells until your sheet appears as follows:

Step 3: Format the Column Labels.

Next I'm going to do a bit of formatting on the labels. I'll left-click cell B1 ("Appointment") and so drag the cursor through the final label — it's in cell H1 ("Residual"). In spreadsheeting lingo, this is called "selecting a range."

I'm "selecting this range" considering I would like to make these headers bear witness upwardly in a bold font. We attain this by clicking the "B" (bold) formatting push button:

I'd also like to requite my row of register labels a background colour that's unlike from the rest of the worksheet. To achieve this, I click the header for Row 1. (It'due south circled in red below.) At present every cell in that row is selected:

Find and click the background-formatting push button; it has a paint-bucket icon on information technology:

This pulls upward a palette from which yous can select your desired background colour. I'm going to utilize a shade of regal.

Our Register labels should at present appear something similar this:

Now we're downwards to the concluding scrap of formatting: Resizing a few of our columns.

Pace iv: Resize Some Columns.

Look at our columns, and retrieve ahead for a moment: Chances are, a few of them just won't be wide enough to hold the data we'll need to put in them. Our "PAYEE" cavalcade, for instance, could concur some pretty long names, and our "MEMO" column (which is meant for any notes you'd like to enter concerning the given transaction) could easily be fifty-fifty longer. And Column A — I use it as but a kind of "spacer" column — could be made more than narrow.

Fortunately, Excel tin handle these situations easily.

Let'southward showtime with Column A. Information technology won't ever hold whatever data, and is mostly only an aesthetic thing — I don't like my tables to run right upwards against the left side of the page. But to conserve viewing space, I'd like to make Column A pretty narrow. Allow'southward click the header for Cavalcade A, which effectively selects the entire column:

We're going to change the width of this column. There are several ways to accomplish this. Because I know the exact width I'm looking for, I'm going to use menus to go it done.

In Excel 2007, using the Habitation ribbon, click the FORMAT button, and so select Column WIDTH.

In the COLUMN WIDTH window that comes up, change the width to two. Click OK. Now Column A is quite narrow:

Next nosotros demand to widen Columns D ("PAYEE") and E ("MEMO"). First, select Column D by clicking its header.

At present place your cursor on the border between Columns D and Due east. When you lot're directly over this border, your cursor will change into ii arrows. This is another, oftentimes-simpler fashion to resize columns and rows — with the resizing cursor.

When your cursor is between the headers of Columns D and E, and the resizing cursor appears, left-click and drag your mouse to the correct. This will widen Cavalcade D. Stop when its width is roughly 23 ... or whatever width you prefer.

Perform the aforementioned widening process on Column Due east ("MEMO").

For ane final formatting alter to our Annals labels, allow's heart each label in its respective cell. In one case again, click Row one's header. This will select the entire row.

Now we want to centre the text labels in each cell in Row one. We do this by clicking the "eye" formatting button ...

... which centers the contents of all currently-selected cells (in this case, Row 1):

Our Annals labels are now created, and we've formatted them enough to brand them look pretty decent. Now it's on to the really fun stuff: calculation formulas and data to our spreadsheet, and letting Excel exercise its matter!

Nosotros'll work on those items in Role ii.