Hi there,
Not sure how to explian this one so here goes.

This pertains to my budget spreadsheet. The budget is setup more or less like this
Budget Sheet
Item Amount Budgeted Expense to Date
Labour 10000
Consumables 5000

Now I have a second sheet (Expenses) which consists of all the individual expenses through out the year.

For example:
Budget Allocation Amount
Labour 350
Consumables 120
Labour 500
Consumables 80
Labour 190

I am trying to work out which function in excel I can use to sum all the labour amounts and the consumable amounts. I want the "expense to date" column to show me all the expenses to date for each Budget Allocation. I have tried with pivots but I can't point the cells on the budget sheet to pivot table sheet until there is an entry in the Expense sheet. The pivot table will not show something that is not there. So let say I have not added "internet expense" to my expense sheet yet, then it will not show up on the pivot table. Which means I cant put a pointer to the pivot table for internet expenses.

I want to write a formula that goes through all the items in the expense sheet and returns a sum of the amount spent. for example: in the expense sheet say Column A there will be muliple entries for Labour. I want to sum only the values that apear next to Labour, and do the same for consumables and so on.

Does anyone here know how to do that, even if you can just give me an example to work from, or suggest the excel function to use.

Thanks