Free Cash Book Template for Small Businesses (Excel)

A cash book is the oldest bookkeeping tool there is: one page, money in on one side, money out on the other, and a running balance in between. Every small shop that knows its numbers runs on some version of it. This page gives you a free cash book template for Excel and Google Sheets, explains every column so you never wonder what goes where, and walks through a real week of entries from a small shop so you can see it working before you type a single number.

What a cash book records (and what it doesn't)

A cash book records actual money moving: a customer pays you €18, a supplier takes €230, you withdraw €50 for the shop float. That's it — real money, real dates. It does not record promises. An invoice you sent but haven't been paid for is not in the cash book yet. A customer tab is not in the cash book until the customer settles it. This is a feature, not a weakness: the cash book answers the one question that keeps owners up at night — 'how much money actually came in and went out?' — without the fog of pending payments. It is also not a tax document. It feeds your accountant good raw material, but it is not a tax return, an official invoice register, or a payroll record.

Download the template: Excel and Google Sheets

The template on this page is free, with no email address required. It comes in two flavours: an Excel file (.xlsx) that also opens in LibreOffice, and a Google Sheets version you can copy to your own Drive and open from your phone. Both are identical: one tab per month, the columns explained below, and formulas already in place so the running balance and monthly totals calculate themselves. If you prefer to build your own, you can recreate it in five minutes — the column list below is the complete recipe. There is nothing magic in the file; the magic is in filling it in daily.

Column-by-column walkthrough

• Date — the day the money moved, not the day you remembered to write it down. If you catch up on Sunday, still enter Thursday's sale under Thursday.
• Description — five to ten words a stranger could understand: 'haircut, regular client', 'coffee beans, Silva supplier', 'till roll and cleaning spray'. 'Stuff' is not a description.
• Category — pick from a short fixed list: sales, supplies, rent, utilities, wages, transport, other. Seven categories you actually use beat thirty categories you don't.
• Money in — the amount received, only if money came in. Leave it blank otherwise; never put a negative number in this column.
• Money out — the amount paid, only if money went out. Same rule: one of these two columns is always blank on any row.
• Payment method — cash, card, or bank transfer. This one column is what lets you check the till against the drawer and the card terminal against your bank statement later.
• Balance — calculated automatically: previous balance plus money in minus money out. In the template this column is locked with a formula; you never type in it.

A worked week: sample entries from a small shop

Here is Monday to Saturday for a small repair shop, so you can see the rhythm. Monday: screen repair €45 in (card), replacement parts €120 out (transfer) — a negative day on paper, but the parts will serve ten future jobs. Tuesday: two battery swaps, €35 and €35 in (cash), till roll €4.20 out (cash). Wednesday: quiet — one charging-port fix, €30 in (cash). Thursday: laptop cleanup €55 in (card), courier fee €8 out (cash). Friday: the big one — insurance-covered tablet repair €140 in (transfer), plus a screen protector sale €12 in (cash). Saturday: three small jobs totalling €82 in (mixed), and €25 out for a new set of screwdrivers. Week's total: €434 in, €157.20 out, €276.80 kept. Notice what the columns just did: you now know Friday carried the week, Wednesday is your weak day, and roughly a third of your income arrived in cash. Three insights from thirty seconds of reading — that is what a cash book is for.

Common mistakes that break your cash book

• Batching entries once a week. Memory invents numbers. Five entries logged daily are worth more than twenty reconstructed on Sunday night.
• Mixing personal and business money in the same rows. The €30 you took for groceries is a real entry — mark it 'owner drawings', don't leave it invisible.
• Skipping small amounts. €3 here and €5 there feel like nothing; across a month they are often €150 or more of unexplained gap.
• Typing over the balance formula. If the balance column stops matching reality, this is usually why. Fix the formula; don't 'correct' the number by hand.
• Vague descriptions. In January, 'supplier payment' from last July tells you nothing. Write the name.
• Recording the invoice date instead of the payment date. The cash book tracks money movement — an unpaid invoice does not belong in it yet.

When a template stops being enough

A spreadsheet cash book has one structural weakness, and it isn't the spreadsheet — it's the sit-down moment it demands. Filling it in requires you, a device, and five quiet minutes, every single day. Most small-business owners have the first two and almost never the third. The pattern is predictable: three good weeks, then a busy Friday gets skipped, then the guilt of back-filling makes Monday easier to skip too, and by week six the file is abandoned. If that has happened to you before, the fix is not more discipline — it is shrinking the task until it fits inside your actual day. Some owners solve it with a strict two-minute closing ritual. Others move the entry point to where they already are: their phone, their chat app, the pocket between two customers. Either way, the columns above stay exactly the same; only the door you enter through changes.