Using Excel

[Jenn214]

Hi, I am not very good with excel...I see many posts about using excel for their coupons. I am not sure what or how to even go about tracking them this way? I thought I saw a post that had an example in it but I can't seem to find that. Is anyone able to explain or share how they do this? How does it sort out and go along with grabbing them from your binder? Is the excel spreasheet set up like your binders?
TIA!
Jenn

[Eldarwen]

I am stil very new to couponing this being my second week, and I made an excel sheet. I dont know how others are doing their's, but the way I did mine was on the bottom of the page your working on you can see sheet one, sheet two ect. I renamed those sheets and made a sheet for each letter a-z and a #'s sheet

Then I made 5 categories in the A-E columns.
The first column A is if its a man. q or if its a IP,
The second column B is what the coupon is good for ex. Amp energy drink
The thrid column C is how much off for the Amp it was $1/4 or $1.00 off 4
The fourth column D I put in the expiration date for the Amp it was 5/21,
The fifth column E I put how many of those coupons i have im my binder ex. 10 because I have 10 Amp coupons.

And then I put all the information I had for each of my coupons in the respective Letter. In the beginning its going to be alot of work to input all your coupons however if like me you don't have a ton it shouldn't be so bad.

Once you get them all in, then you can use the sort button in the data tab to organize your coupons the way you want. For instance if you are wanting to organize the expiration dates by oldest to newest. First you would select all the data on the sheet you want to organize, and then click the sort button. A pop up comes on the screen, it will have pull down options
the first is sort by when you pull down the menu it will say column A, Column B, Column C, Column D, Column E you would select column D for the expiration column

then the second section is sort on you will want to use values.

the third section is order they have listed oldest to newest, newest to oldest or custom order. click oldest to newest and click ok.

This will change all your info on your page to the oldest expiration to the newest expiration that you have. This is good for when you want to delete old expired coupons you can find them easily, then you can take them out of your binder and then just highlight the whole row of the coupon you want to delete, and click the delete in your cells section of your home tab.

You can also sort by A-Z or Z-A. Sorting your B column will list alphabetically the names what coupons you have so you can see if you have that coupon easier.

Another thing I did to mine was if i have a coupon that is good for more then one letter for example I have one for Windex, scrubbing bubbles and pledge. I put the coupon in one of the letters in my case the W for Windex, and then In the S I put scrubbing bubbles in the B column and in the A column I put "IN W" that way I know that the coupon for the scrubbing bubbles is in the W section of my Binder. Same for Pledge in the P sheet I put "IN W" and made a row for the pledge so I know that I do have a coupon for that item but its not in the S or P section but the W section.

I know this is long but I hope it helps you. Who knows maybe there is a Excel sheet that is Passed along to new Couponers and some one can give you a copy. I just found it was much easier just to make my own so I can customize it to my needs.

[Jenn214]

Thanks for the explaination! It does make sense how you do it. Do you just work on yours in your computer? Do you print yours? I don't have many q's yet and probably wont since my grocery's don't usually double without a special store coupon they offer and it is rare.
Thanks again for the help!