What’s the best template for tracking recurring expenses and proper categories?

[MatthewFM]

I’m trying to get a better handle on our monthly operational spending, but our current spreadsheet is a mess of one-off entries. I’m wondering if anyone has a template or a system for tracking recurring expenses that actually forces you to categorize each line item properly.

[Emily31]

I built a Google Sheets template that forces a category on every line. It has columns like date, vendor, amount, category, subcategory, recurrence, notes, and the category column uses data validation with a drop-down list. We treat it as a table and use a pivot by category at month end to see where the money goes.

[Mila3]

A colleague switched to Airtable for this and hid the chaos behind a recurring expense table. Each entry must choose a category and there is a linked category taxonomy. We also added a Recurring flag so the calendar view shows only repeating items, and it helped surface gaps in categorization. My concern is I tried to link it to bank feeds once but that added noise rather than clarity.

[Noah_R]

Do you think the issue is the template, or is it that people simply do not fill in the category field consistently?

[Eleanor.T]

We tried a simple Excel approach with a required category via data validation, plus a monthly check that flagged rows without a category. It forced cleanup in month two, but a few vendors kept slipping into misc anyway; we paused to rework vendor mapping.