Bill Organiser Spreadsheet: How to Organise Household Bills

A bill organiser spreadsheet is the simplest way to see every household bill in one place. You give each bill its own row, record the amount and the date it leaves your account, and sort the whole sheet by date. Once a month you tick off what has been paid. It takes about half an hour to set up and five minutes a month to keep up to date.

This guide gives you the exact columns, shows where to find every bill, and covers the bills that spreadsheets usually miss.

The columns to use

Set up one row per bill and these seven columns:

Column	What goes in it	Example
Bill	What it is	Gas and electric
Paid to	The company or council	Your energy supplier
Amount	What leaves your account	£95
How it’s paid	Direct debit, standing order or card	Direct debit
Date	The day of the month it leaves	5th
Repeats	Monthly, quarterly or yearly	Monthly
Paid	Ticked each month	Yes

Keep the amount column as plain numbers so the spreadsheet can add them up. A total at the bottom of the amount column shows your monthly bills at a glance.

If you share bills with a partner or housemates, add one more column for “Who pays” or “My share”. Our guides to splitting bills when you move in together and splitting bills in a house share show how to work out the shares.

Where to find every bill

Citizens Advice suggests gathering your most recent bank statements, payslips, and card statements or bills before you build a budget. The same pile fills your spreadsheet.

1. Direct debits and standing orders. Your banking app lists them. At NatWest, for example, you go to Payments, then Regular payments. Copy each one onto a row.
2. Card payments. Scroll back through two or three months of card transactions. Subscriptions and some phone or gym payments are taken from your card, so they will not appear in the direct debit list.
3. Bills you pay by hand. Anything you pay by bank transfer each month, such as rent to a private landlord, goes on too.
4. Yearly and quarterly bills. These are the ones that surprise people. A TV licence, for example, costs £180 a year according to GOV.UK, and some people pay it in one go.

When you have a row for everything, sort the sheet by the Date column. The list now reads in the order your money leaves.

Mark your payday

Add a row for your payday, or colour the line where it falls. Bills just before payday are the ones most likely to leave you short. If several land in the few days before you are paid, our guide to putting your bills in the right order explains how to ask companies to move them.

Handle the bills that are not monthly

A spreadsheet makes yearly bills easy to forget, because they only show up once. Two simple fixes:

• Give each one its real date. A yearly bill gets a row with the month and day it is due, so it appears in the right place when you sort.
• Add a monthly set-aside figure. Divide the yearly amount by 12 and put that number in a separate column. A £180 TV licence becomes £15 a month. Move that amount into savings each payday, and the bill is covered when it comes.

Keep it accurate

Prices change. Energy, phone and broadband bills can go up, council tax changes every April, and introductory deals end. Each time a bill changes, update the row the same day.

Direct debits have a safety net. Under the Direct Debit Guarantee, the company normally tells you 10 working days before your account is debited if the amount or date changes, and you get a full and immediate refund from your bank if a payment is taken in error. A change notice is your cue to update the spreadsheet.

A quick monthly routine works well:

1. On payday, open the sheet and check the total for the month.
2. Tick each bill in the Paid column once you see it leave your account.
3. Add any new bill the day you sign up for it.

When a spreadsheet stops being enough

A spreadsheet only works when you open it. It cannot tell you that a bill is due on Friday. That is the main reason people move from a spreadsheet to a bill organiser app once their list is built.

A bill tracker app like Billo keeps the same list, with every bill, amount and due date, and reminds you 3 days before each bill is due and again on the day. You can stamp each bill paid, much like the Paid column in your spreadsheet. If you already have a spreadsheet, it makes a good starting list: add each row to the app once, and the reminders take over from there.

Whichever you choose, the list itself is what keeps you on top of your bills. Build it once, keep it current, and check it every payday.