How to automatically reference values in other sheets that change by date

I have a numbers file that I use to manage my home budget. The first sheet is a running total value of multiple budget items that are computed every week. So every week I have a formula that takes the previous week and adds the weekly budget value and shows that new value. Easy Peasy.


I then have a separate sheet for each month. In each of those sheets I have all the budget items with an adjacent notes column. Once a month I list all of my expenditures in each budget category. I total those columns at the bottom of the sheet.


Back at the main page, for the last week of each month, for each budget category, I subtract the Total value for the month of each budget category. So now on a. monthly basis I know how much money I have for each category. And My monthly sheets show where I spent it. Not so easy but it works.


The not so easy part is having to subtract the total entries of each monthly budget category from each main page budget entry. And I have to do this every month.


Maybe I am making this all too complicated? I would think that there would have to be a way to do this all for one month and then copy that to the next month and the next and the next, etc. But I cannot figure out how to do this.

iMac (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Aug 1, 2025 12:35 PM

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Aug 2, 2025 10:42 AM in response to bob Keenan

I'm not quite picturing what you are doing. If you have all data entries in one table, it should (?) be an easy matter to set up a "monthly" table, populate it using the FILTER function, then duplicate it for other months and only have to change the value in one cell (one that contains a date for that month).


The data table will have one entry per row. One column is needed for the date. Each entry must have a date, including the year. If you are using separate columns for each category of expenditure, those that occur on a single date can be on the same row but I'd do that only if they are related in some way. If there are any "notes", they should be in this table not the monthly tables.


The monthy table will use the FILTER function to pull all entries for that month. Once cell in the table will hold the date of the first day of the month, including the year. All entries in data table from then until the end of the month will be displayed by the FILTER function. The only cell that should be edited in this table is one with the date. Don't write notes in this table because if you make a change in the data table it might move things around and your notes might not match up anymore. Duplicate this table and change the date for the next month.


Or, instead of separate monthly tables, you can use the Categorize feature of Numbers to display everything in the data table categorized by month. No formulas necessary.


Or maybe use pivot tables but that's not something I am all that familar with.


I don't know if any of these ideas satisfy all (or any) of your criteria but hopefully something in all that helps.

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How to automatically reference values in other sheets that change by date

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