Summarizing Expenses by Category

I would like to keep track of my business expenses in Excel.

My goal is to record all expenses together on Sheet1 and use Sheet2 to generate quarterly summary reports with a categorical breakdown.

I attached the spreadsheet so you can see what I am talking about, but I will try to explain it here as well:

Example.

Expenses are recorded vertically, by date (A), category (B), description (C), vendor (D), amount (E), check number (F), tax deductible (G).

On Sheet2 I want a categorical breakdown. I want to tell the cell to calculate the sum of all my expenses categorized as “Rent” or “Electric”.

I am unfamiliar with Excel, and I thought that I could use a lookup command that would go something like:

=SUM(LOOKUP(Electric,Expenses!B:B,Expenses!E:E))

Obviously, however, this didn’t work and I’m not really sure where to go from here. I am not familiar enough with the terminology to even know what to search for in the way of help. I plan on getting a book on Excel in a few days, however it would be great if you could help me with this problem in the mean time.

Thanks!!

Thank you!!!

I knew there had to be a simple way to do that.

Awesome forum - Thanks again!