Select cell A1, which should be “Category” and hold the shift key then select the category in row 11. We don’t really want to see it and hiding it will make creating the pie chart for our budget easier.
Right click the column B header and choose “Hide” to hide this column. For whatever reason, pie charts don’t like negative amounts so without this step your chart comes up empty. This is going to change the negative amount values to absolute values. In Column C, row 1 add a header called “Amount.” Then enter the following formula into row 2 in column C. Now, let’s reformat the amounts so the pie chart can use them. And since we want to see the top 10 spending categories, we’re ordering the expense actuals from highest to lowest, or ascending. We only want to pull in spending data for categories that are “expense” types, which is customized on the Categories sheet. The query is just leveraging the calculations the Monthly Budget sheet is already doing. This simple Google Sheets query works because the information we need for our budget pie chart is on the Monthly Budget sheet in hidden columns T through W. This should bring in a list of expense categories and their actuals ordered by highest to lowest by amount value. In column A, enter the following query into row 1: =query('Monthly Budget'!T15:W209,"Select V,W where T = 'Expense' order by W ASC",-1) Double click the new tab to rename it “Pie Chart.” Click the plus sign in the lower left corner of your Google Sheet to add a tab. Adding a pie chart to your budget spreadsheetįirst, add a new sheet to your Google Sheet.