@wjallen14 Bill, I didn't recognize you at first. Just went back and looked at some of the previous Q&A around your task here.
Can I ask how old your daughter is? It would certainly appear that she's old enough to be working at a job, so she's out of school..... It's unusual, as you no doubt know, for the younger generation to be less computer savvy than their parents. So you are to be commended for your own energy here.
I also noted in those earlier exchanges (especially here: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Excel/if-statements/m-p/1014389 ) the recommendations you received to use Tables, ideally ONE table for all the input, followed by using Pivot Tables for the output, the reporting. And I can see why, for somebody not computer savvy, you'd be uncomfortable with that recommendation.
I do agree with Riny's last suggestion that you simply create a new workbook for 2020 and manually copy over those very few Year End actual numbers from Dec 2019. It's not as elegant, perhaps, but it's far clearer, and it would enable her to keep a history of 2019.
That said, let me get a bit more philosophical (in an Excel mode) about the task you've undertaken.
Creating a budget or expense tracking spreadsheet can be among the more complex tasks to undertake as one's "first design." So much depends on not only the level of computer expertise but also a lot on how you (or your daughter) intend to USE the resulting workbook.
The way yours is designed right now (as somebody, not I, observed in that earlier exchange) takes minimal advantage of Excel's abilities; on the converse, it asks a LOT of the user. To just take one example, instead of creating an annual budget for Entertainment, you ask her to enter individual figures for each category, Books, Journals, Movies.... and to do so each month.
It would be a better use of the ability of Excel to have a separate worksheet for Annual Budget, where there'd be one number for Entertainment (or you could get more granular and have one for each line under that, but you have 14 high level budget categories already. With just one number for Entertainment for the year, you'd then divide that by 12 for each month and show that as the "Projected Cost" bottom line for that category, and compare the actuals only on the bottom line. And all that would have to be entered each month would be the actuals.
It's of course possible that you intend to make your daughter think more intentionally each month about how much she plans to spend on each of those lines, and then see what she actually spent. But I think it possible that you're unintentionally setting her up either to get totally turned off OR to see the trees (or, worse, the leaves on the trees) but miss the forest altogether.
Did you ever look at the Excel templates for budgets? If you did, you probably were disappointed! I just looked and could not find any (except for ones obviously designed for business use) that asked one to establish a budget or planned amount for given categories, as you are doing here. Instead, all of the personal ones I looked at were basically just expense tracking sheets, comparing income to expenses, which is fine as far as it goes, but I would not dignify them with the lable "Personal Budget" worksheets.
Finally, Bill, for your sake, I need to clarify a point regarding Tables. You have indeed set up many of the sections in each month as Tables. But for functional purposes what you really have (and in some cases it really IS) are lots of Ranges. The latter being a set of rows and columns set off by some fancy borders. A range can be referred to via Naming the Range....but in any event is not a formal Excel Table. You do have most of them set up as Tables, as both the formatting and the little diamonds in many of the headings makes clear, but you're not using them as Tables in the sense that those earlier Q&A exchanges were suggesting. You're using them as Ranges. Which is fine for your purpose, but it's a distinction you need to be aware of. The Tables that various folks were suggesting would have been at most a single table for the entry (input) of ALL actual expenses, and then that same table would be used as the basis for a Pivot Table output report. You would also have a single table where you'd enter the Budget for each category or line item, and those budget numbers could be compared with the actuals for each category or line item. Here's a good description of the distinctive features of Tables and why they're important tools. https://www.excelrush.com/excel-tables-vs-excel-data-range/ I'm really not suggesting--given that you're designing this for your daughter--that you try the more sophisticated Table design that we purists might want, but I am suggesting that (as described at the very end of that link) you convert them all to Ranges: they'll function perfectly well, and you, or your daughter, won't be inadvertently filtering or slicing when that's not really what you want at this stage.
I'm going to take a more in-depth look at your workbook and see if there are some simple improvements I could make. If I do, I'll post the result here.
