Fluid (fuel etc) usage spreadsheet

[rlaggren]

I have fiddled an OpenOffice (Calc) spreadsheet into doing mostly what I want for recording fuel, oil and other fluids for a vehicle. It's basically just lines of data with date, odo, fluid type, amount, price, etc. It keeps track of MPG automatically (provided you don't forget to enter stuff) and will probably track oil usage similarly soon. You can insert any number of comment lines any time w/out confusing it. There is some minimal data validity checking.

If there's any interest and if Al's willing to host a copy, I'm happy to share. It also seems to work in Excel 97/2000 format, but I don't run that system much so no promises. It does NOT appear to work in Excel 95, although I don't seen why not in the brief time I played w/it. If anybody wants, I can try it with the Excel 5 format.


Rufus

[rlaggren]

Have uploaded two files: the OpenOffice original and the Excel 97-2000 copy which OO produced. The XL version is 10 times (!) the size of the OO version... Maybe if you use XL, you could do a SAVE-AS after opening it and it might magically shrink again... Not a clue.

Fluids Spreadsheet (Open Office format) (296k)
Fluids Spreadsheet (Excel format) (3.2MiB)

There is a "user guide" cell near the top which contains a "Note" with some remarks in it. Mouse over or click or whatever to open the note.

If you use it and have problems, let me know. It may be something dumb and obvious (eg. I ul'd the wrong version). Or something that was plainly obvious to me is clear a mud to someone else...

It's intended to leverage data copied from the simple chronological entries out of the car's logbook. I enter from the front of the log for fluids and from the back for repairs so I just copy the front of the book every month or so. I find a plain list easy to understand and see things at a glance.

I'll probably enhance this over time, but for now it just calculates gas and oil usage, although it provides for entering a number of other fluids. I found the spreadsheet formulas and manipulations bizantine (sp?) in a truly annoying way, so it may be a little while before I go further. Hopefully I have "packaged" it in a way that it will appear simple and easily usable.

Rufus