Freelancer Variable-Income Budget & Tax Dashboard — Google Sheets & Excel

Some months you invoice $6,000. Some months, $900. This dashboard tells you what you can actually spend: one safe-to-spend number, updated every time a client pays, with your tax money set aside first.

HOW IT WORKS

• Finds your baseline month from the last 6 months you actually got paid (months with no income are skipped).
• - Protects your tax money first: income tax + self-employment tax set aside on every payment.
• - Funds your lean-month buffer and emergency fund automatically, then shows what's left as your allowance.

WHAT'S INSIDE (one file, 6 tabs)

• SAFE-TO-SPEND: the core calculation in four plain-English steps, plus what's left of this month's allowance
• - INCOME LOG: 300 rows; type a payment and the tax set-aside appears instantly
• - EXPENSES: 300 rows with 12 editable categories
• - DASHBOARD: 12 months of income, set-asides and spending with an auto-updating chart
• - SETTINGS: every percentage, target and balance in one place
• - START: a plain-English 3-step setup guide

Also includes the Reserve Health Check: it compares what your logged payments should have reserved for tax against what's really in your tax savings account, and shows the gap in dollars.

WORKS WITH

Google Sheets (free) and Microsoft Excel. Instant digital download: one .xlsx file with import instructions inside. No subscription, no login, yours forever.

PLEASE NOTE

• Digital download; no physical item will be shipped. For personal business use; please don't resell or share the file.
• - A planning tool, not tax or financial advice. The default set-aside percentages are common US rules of thumb, not a calculation of your actual liability. Every percentage is editable; set them with your accountant.
• - Figures shown come from the example data included in the file.
• - Designed by us and built with the assistance of AI tools, then manually reviewed and verified: every formula was hand-checked against an independent calculation before release.
• - Not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft or Google.