I Built a $29 Expense Tracker That Replaces Your $30/Month Accounting App
Most small business owners track their money in one of three ways: a messy spreadsheet they built at 2 AM, an accounting app they're paying $30/month for but only using 10% of, or their head.
None of those work.
I spent 30 years building dashboards and analytics tools for Fortune 500 companies. When I started running my own business, I realized the tools I built for corporations didn't exist for the one-person shop. QuickBooks is overkill. Free templates are ugly ledgers. The $15 Etsy templates are designed for personal budgets, not businesses.
So I built what I actually needed.
The Small Business Revenue & Expense Tracker Pro is a Google Sheets + Excel spreadsheet that does three things no other template at this price does:
- IRS Schedule C mapping. Every expense category is pre-loaded and mapped to the exact line number on your tax form. At tax time, you open the Tax Summary tab and hand it to your accountant. Done in 15 minutes, not 15 hours.
- A real dashboard. Not a pie chart slapped on a tab. Four KPI cards showing Total Revenue, Total Expenses, Net Profit, and Profit Margin — all auto-calculated. Monthly breakdown, expense by category, budget vs. actual tracking. It looks like a SaaS app, not a spreadsheet.
- Monthly health check alerts. The spreadsheet tells you what to pay attention to. Profit margin dropping? It flags it. Expenses spiking in a category? You'll see it. No other template does this.
The whole thing takes 5 minutes to set up and 5 minutes a week to maintain.
It costs $29 once. No subscription. No login. No learning curve.
If you're a freelancer, consultant, or small business owner who wants to know — really know — whether you're profitable, this is the spreadsheet I wish someone had built for me 10 years ago.
