Formula to see if you're on track of monthly budget

Question

I'm not sure where to post this question but I thought here would be a good spot. What would be a Google Sheets formula to see if I am on track to stay within my allocated monthly allowance? I'm not very good at math and I've tried to come up with a solution but I'm not sure how & I've looked it up and done research but I still am not sure of the right formula to use. I've tried using something like (actual - goal)/ABS(goal)+100% but that returns a small number and I'm sure that's not correct.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! thanks!

Answer 1

Not sure I understand your question, maybe some example numbers could help.

Let say you have:

goal = 1000
actual=150

Using your formula

actual - goal = -850

I think what you should do is to find (goal - actual) instead => 850

Then you can do your percentage of use:

(goal - actual) / goal * 100 => 85%

So on your sheet, if your goal is in the cell A1 and your actual in cell A2, type something like (this is excel-like I believe):

=($A$1 - $A$2) / $A$1 * 100

Hope it is helping.