How to Make a Budget Pie Chart in Google Sheets

A pie chart is one of the fastest ways to see exactly where your money is going. Instead of just looking at a list of expenses, a pie chart turns those numbers into a simple visual that shows which categories are taking the biggest slice of your budget. This article will walk you through, step-by-step, how to create a clear and effective budget pie chart using Google Sheets, from setting up your data to customizing the final look.

Why Use a Pie Chart for a Budget?

While spreadsheets are great for logging transactions, they aren't always great for getting a quick, high-level view of your finances. That's where a chart comes in. A pie chart is particularly effective for budgets because it's built to show a "part-to-whole" relationship. Each slice represents a budget category, and the entire pie represents your total spending for a period (like a month).

At a single glance, you can answer questions like:

• What's my biggest expense?
• How much of my income is going towards housing versus savings?
• Are my "fun money" categories staying within a reasonable portion of my total budget?

This visual breakdown makes it much easier to spot areas where you might be overspending and helps keep your financial goals top of mind. For a monthly budget summary, it's often more intuitive than a simple table of data.

Step 1: Set Up Your Budget Data in Google Sheets

Before you can make a chart, you need clean, well-organized data. Google Sheets can't create a visual from numbers scattered randomly across a sheet. For a budget pie chart, you need to structure your data in a simple, two-column format.

Column A: Budget Category. This is where you'll list all your expense categories. Be clear and specific. Good examples include "Rent," "Groceries," "Utilities," "Transportation," "Savings," and "Entertainment."

Column B: Amount. This is where you'll put the dollar amount spent or budgeted for each corresponding category in Column A.

Here’s a simple household budget example:

Feel free to copy this structure for your own budget. The key is to have the categories in one column and their corresponding values right next to them in the second column. If you don't use this format, Google Sheets might get confused about how to turn your data into a pie chart.

Quick Tip: Keep Your Categories Manageable

It can be tempting to break your spending down into dozens of tiny sub-categories, but this makes for a terrible pie chart. A pie chart with 15 slices is cluttered and impossible to read. The goal is clarity, not overwhelming detail.

Instead, group smaller, related expenses together. For example, instead of separate slices for Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube Premium, you could create a single "Subscriptions" category. If you have a few small, random purchases that don't fit anywhere else, group them into a category called "Miscellaneous" or "Other." A good rule of thumb is to stick to 5-8 categories for a clear and readable pie chart.

Step 2: Create the Pie Chart in Google Sheets

Once your data is neatly organized, creating the actual chart takes only a few clicks. The process is straightforward and much simpler than you might think.

Here are the exact steps:

1. Select your data: Click on the top-left cell of your data (in our example, A1) and drag your mouse down to the bottom-right cell (B7) to highlight all the categories and their amounts. Make sure you don't accidentally highlight empty rows or columns.
2. Go to the Insert menu: With your data highlighted, look at the top menu bar in Google Sheets and click on Insert > Chart.
3. Choose the Pie Chart type: Google Sheets is pretty smart and will often guess that you want a pie chart based on your data structure. But if it defaults to a different chart type (like a bar or line chart), you can easily fix it. A “Chart editor” sidebar will appear on the right. In the "Setup" tab, find the "Chart type" dropdown menu and select Pie chart.

Just like that, you'll have a pie chart generated right there on your sheet! It will automatically assign a color to each category and create a legend so you know what each slice represents.

Step 3: Customize Your Budget Pie Chart

The default chart works, but to make it truly useful and easy to read, you'll want to make a few tweaks. The "Chart editor" sidebar is where you'll make all your adjustments. If you accidentally closed it, just double-click on your chart to bring it back.

Navigate to the Customize tab in the Chart editor. Here’s how to make some of the most impactful changes.

Add a Descriptive Chart Title

The default title might just be "Amount vs. Category." Let's fix that. Under the "Customize" tab, go to Chart & axis titles. In the "Title text" field, type something more descriptive, like "Monthly Expense Breakdown" or "Where My Money Went: July." You can also change the font, size, and color of the title here.

Adjust Pie Slice Labels

Seeing the category labels right on the pie slices can be much clearer than looking back and forth at the legend. Under the "Customize" tab, find the Pie chart section. Click the dropdown menu next to "Slice label." You have a few great options here:

• Percentage: This shows what percentage of your total budget each category takes up. It's fantastic for seeing proportions at a glance.
• Value: This shows the actual dollar amount within each slice.
• Label: This shows the category name (e.g., "Groceries").

For most budgets, displaying the Percentage is the most insightful option. It instantly tells you if, for example, 40% of your income is going to rent.

Change the Colors of the Slices

Don't like the default colors Google Sheets picked? No problem. In the "Customize" tab, go to Series. Here you can change the color of the entire chart at once, or you can change the color of individual slices.

To change one slice, use the dropdown selector to choose a category (like "Entertainment") and then pick a new color from the color palette below it. This can be useful for making important categories like "Savings" stand out with a bold color.

Turn it into a Doughnut Chart

A "doughnut" chart is just a pie chart with a hole in the middle. Some people find this style to be visually cleaner and more modern than a standard pie chart.

To make this change, simply go to the Pie chart section in the Customize tab and set the "Doughnut hole" to a percentage like 25% or 50%. Setting it to 0% will turn it back into a standard pie chart.

Putting it All Together: Your Final Budget Chart

By following these steps, you can quickly transform a boring table of numbers into a professional and insightful visual report of your budget.

Your chart will also be dynamic. This means if you go back to your data table and change a number - say, you update your grocery spending from $450 to $500 - your pie chart will automatically update to reflect the change. This is incredibly helpful for managing your budget in real time throughout the month.

You can then screenshot your chart for a report, download it as an image file (click the three dots on the top right of the chart), or just keep it on your Google Sheet as a financial dashboard.

Final Thoughts

Creating a budget pie chart in Google Sheets is an easy and effective way to gain clarity on your financial habits. By properly organizing your data, inserting a chart, and customizing the design, you can build a powerful visual tool that helps you understand your spending and make smarter financial decisions in just a few minutes.

Building charts from a single spreadsheet is a great starting point for anyone wanting to get a handle on their data. But as your financial life gets more complex, pulling data from business accounts, credit cards, ad platforms, and CRMs into a single sheet becomes a tedious manual chore. We built Graphed to automate that process entirely. You can connect all your data sources in seconds, then simply ask for the visual you need in plain English - like, "create a pie chart of Shopify sales by marketing channel last month." Graphed instantly builds a live, interactive dashboard, letting you skip the data wrangling and get straight to the insights.