How would you add a budget/spreadsheet?

Is your spreadsheet in Excel? Because you can post a link to the Excel spreadsheet and also a link to a free Excel reader

https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c8378bf4-996c-4569-b547-75edbd03aaf0&displaylang=EN

for those (smart) visitors who choose not to clutter their computer with the bloatware that is known as Microsoft… (Okay, hold my drink while I climb down off my soapbox!)

If your spreadsheet is in Corel’s Quattro Pro, I’m not aware that Corel offers a free reader.

Or were you planning to add the data to a MySQL database and run queries on it? (Also out of my league, but some code guru will likely be along shortly to help on this one!)

OpenOffice also provides you with the ability to create a web page from a spreadsheet (although I’ve never personally done it):

https://www.openoffice.org/

And if you don’t have Microsoft Office, OpenOffice is free.

Thanks
We dont actually wish to use any 3rd party software.. if possible… just create something…. using php and mysql? That would allow several registered users to update data in particular fields online? (my ID, the receipt ID, short description, cost and total from a starting sum)
what we want to do sounds so simple, there must be some hard reason it hasnt been done… php and mysql seem married for just this reason?

Not just for the above use, but for many possible uses like this?

Unfortunately I am snowed in with work until October, will then try to do learn php! However, I am sure I will not know how to integrate it to WP.

I did some searching through hotscripts.com and found many php scripts for setting up a database. I’m sure you could find something that would do what you want.

In WordPress the loop runs through every entry that matches the current query. How it displays that information is entirely up to you. So if you wanted to build a spreadsheet then you could design your loop to output a table. And in certain cells you’d display the fields you want. For instance you could turn the Excerpt field into the cost and use the Title field for what you purchased. A better idea would be to use custom fields to store the budget data. You can pull that information out easily using Scott Reilly’s Get Custom Fields plugin.

Assuming you have regular posts and budget posts you’ll probably have to run two queries because regular posts displaying in the middle of your table would ruin the effect :-). So run two loops in your page. One is your regular blog. The second loop outputs the table by only querying posts in the ‘budget’ category.

As for spreadsheet functions totaling columns… You can use PHP to capture costs as you go through the loop and then display totals at the end.

Let me know how you’re thinking of displaying the information and I’ll try to be a bit more specific. In the meantime you can check the Codex for information on multiple loops.

Ming
This sounds great. A little like the Event Calender plugin which we will also use. (in a deadline, will get back later). There are many projects now I am involved with that don’t need complicated project management tools, but they do need simple tables.. using divs like: https://www.computerfinearts.com/collection/walczak/futureface/

jwurster
I searched also, but none had simple setup instructions that I could understand… were there any you thought were real simple?

I read about multiple loops (changed a bunch of things on my sites). In the end however I found this ‘checkbook’ in php/mysql: https://eltonwilson.com/index.php?programs=xvf97
which was exactly what we needed and so simple. It took hours to find it! Weird.

However, I still think it would be great to integrate more simple project management functions into WordPress like the event calendar plugin.
Thanks.