Interactive Mortgage Calculator to know how much you can borrow (with Excel)

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Today we will build a mortgage payment calculator using excel. But we will not build a boring excel sheet, we will build a mortgage calculator that is easy to play with.

A mortgage payment is a monthly installment that you pay towards a loan. Any mortgage loan will typically have,

  • loan amount
  • duration of the loan (also called as tenure of mortgage) in years
  • interest rate (APR) per year

Given these 3 parameters, we can easily determine the monthly installment amount (this will be the same amount for all months during loan tenure)

We are going to use Excel’s form controls (more on this below) to build a mortgage payment calculator like this:
Mortgage Payment Calculator

Why you should not be boring and use the form controls

A form control is a button or check box or scrollbar or some other click-able thing you see in Windows. Do you know that you can add the very same controls to Excel spreadsheet to make the it interactive?

For example,

  • instead of asking a user to enter “yes” or “no” in a cell, you can ask them to click a check box.
  • instead of taking “age” in a cell, you can use a scroll bar and set the values from 0 to 100.

This way of gathering inputs is more fun, engaging and interactive.

Now that you find form controls hot and attractive, lets proceed and make a house loan payment calculator.

How is mortgage payment calculated?

As I said above, any mortgage (or housing loan) will have 3 parts – loan amount (p), loan tenure (n) and annual interest rate (r).

Given the values of P, N and R, we can find the monthly payments using Excel’s PMT formula like this:

=PMT(R/12,N*12,P)

[Related: PMT formula syntax & examples]

[Related: Amortization Schedule in Excel]

We are dividing interest rate (R) by 12 since R is annual interest rate and we make monthly payments.

We are multiplying loan duration (N) with 12 since we are going to make monthly payments.

Making the mortgage calculator in Excel

We will use scroll-bar controls to take numeric inputs required (P,N and R) for the payment calculation. And we feed these values to PMT formula to find the monthly installment amount.

Step 1: Add a Scroll-bar Control

We will use this scroll bar to take “loan amount” input. To keep it simple, we will ask users to enter input in ‘000s. So, if the loan is $120,000, the input should be 120.

First add a scroll-bar form control to your excel sheet. To do this go to Developer Ribbon > Insert > Scroll-bar Form Control in Excel (related: enable developer toolbar in Excel)

Add a Scroll-bar Control

Adding a scroll-bar control in Excel using Developer Ribbon

Once selected, just add the control to spreadsheet by clicking anywhere.

Step 2: Set Properties for this Scroll-bar

To set the properties for the scrollbar control, right click on it and go to “format control” option. Now go to “Control” tab.

Here set minimum and maximum values for the scroll bar. To keep our model simple, just set minimum as 35 and maximum has 500.

Also, select a cell to link the scrollbar. When you do this, excel links the scroll bar to the selected cell. So whenever scroll bar is updated the cell gets updated too (and vice-a-versa). See this illustration:

Set Properties for this Scroll-bar - Excel

Step 3: Add Remaining Scroll bars

Repeat the same steps for 2 other scroll bars. One for interest rate and one for loan tenure.

Make sure you set the minimum and maximum values in a reasonable range.

Step 4: Plug the values in to PMT formula

Now that the scroll bars are ready, just write the PMT formula. Assuming you have linked scroll bars like this:

  • Loan amount in cell A1
  • Interest rate in cell A2
  • Loan tenure (years) in cell A3

The formula will be,

=PMT((A2/12)%,A3*12,A1)

Remember, PMT returns value in negative numbers (as it is the amount we need to pay, not get). But you can make it positive (for display purposes) by multiplying it with -1 like this = -PMT((A2/12)%,A3*12,A1)

Step 5: Play with your Model

Now your mortgage payment calculator is ready. You can play with it by testing various combinations and finding monthly payments. You can easily see what happens when you increase loan tenure or decrease interest rate.

Mortgage Payment Calculator

Download Excel Mortgage Payment Calculator

Here is the excel mortgage payment calculator file. Download and play with it.

Bonus – Making an Amortization Schedule

You can easily extend this model to add an amortization schedule to see how much of each monthly payment is towards principal and how much is for interest.

  • You can calculate principal portion for any month using PPMT formula like this =PPMT(R/12,M,N*12,P). Here “M” is the month for which you want principal amount.
  • You can calculate interest portion for any month using IPMT formula like this =IPMT(R/12,M,N*12,P).

Full tutorial: Loan Amortization Schedule with Excel.

Do you love form controls?

Do you use form controls in your spreadsheets? I find them pretty intuitive and use them wherever I can. I have made many complex spreadsheet models easy to understand and work with by just adding form controls. The beauty is that, they require no programming or anything. You just add them and link them to a cell.

What about you? Do you love form controls? Where do you use them most?

Learn More about Excel Form Controls:

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49 Responses to “Interactive Pivot Table Calendar & Chart in Excel!”

  1. Saran says:

    Excellent post again from awesome chandoo.org

    This is one of the post to evident, without using macros we can create excellent charts using available excel options.

    Slicer is one of the useful option in excel 2010 .. excited to see more options in excel 2013.

    Regards,
    Saran
    http://www.lostinexcel.blogspot.com

  2. Pavi says:

    Nice one chandoo............... great work done.....

  3. Luke M says:

    Cool article. Only downside was that I didn't see at first that I needed 2010. Guess I still have to wait awhile before getting to try this out myself.

  4. Jason says:

    I consider myself an Excel expert, but you constantly amaze me with posts like this.  Fantastic calendar!

  5. Kevin says:

    Good post, like this little trick!!
    How to not show the value in the cell
    format the cell to custom with the below
    ;;;

  6. parsnip says:

    Could you add lists of holidays to be transferred to the calendar days?
    Two lists would be needed: 1) for the holidays that stay fixed (eg, CHristmas), and 2) for the holidays that move around (eg, Thanksgiving).
    Such lists would be prepared externally, and the program would transfer their information to the appropriate days.

  7. Wow! This is something amazing. I am going to do some practicals with this and show a sales trend on this. As we have our sales plans weekly basis, this should impress by boss when put in dashboard. Cool.

    And thanks1

  8. John H says:

    Chandoo you have a knack of getting on to these great looking very creative ideas! 

    One thing with calendars I have seen before is not catering for able to enter notes or appointments or project milestones.  But with this one it's easy enough to add the extra lines as you have done for the chart concept and link to this other type of info.

    For 2003 we could replace slicers with a validation style dropdown couldn't we?
     

  9. Jitto says:

    Chandoo, you are awesome;)  i was using calender to show my reports, but i had made all months and then underneith date shows the value, man its really awesome . i am going to use this format for my reports.. only draw back for me is i am using 2007. hence no slicer.. may be have to modify with out slicer.

  10. Mawdo81 says:

    Why not use =weeknum() for the weeknum column?

  11. 3G says:

    Great tricks! I love trying to reproduce the charts myself to get the hang of 'em. This one was great.

    My only issue is getting the VBA in the year object to refresh the data. I used the VBA provided at the link, and, I can see it in the Macros tab, but, when I click the spinner the data does not update. Any tips?

    Thx!
    3G

  12. Vaughan says:

    Just started at chandoo - this is great!

    I opted to use the formula  =IF(F6>F5,G5,G5+1) for my weeknum - worked for me (I didn't get all the way through the example, since I'm running Excel 2007 - so don't know if that'll affect anything later in the example). I'm open to comments on this alternative approach.

    Thanks for creating this website!

    VC (Excel student).
     

  13. Jordan Goldmeier says:

    Very cool - but now I'm even more excited for the new time controls for Excel 2013!

  14. shanmughan says:

    Great calendar... 

    I wonder whether we can make a school calendar (Class, subjects, teachers) using this calendar, assuming the weekly plan is duplicated across the year.

     

    • Jan Halliday says:

      I would love to be a part of creating a class schedule...I'm attempting to help a friend (gratis) to do just that - can you point me in the right direction or provide a sample of sorts?

  15. [...] Wow – what do you think of the interactive calendar chart demo above? To achieve this impressive effect you must have Excel 2010 because it utilises slicers, which is a feature introduced in Excel 2010. Find out how this treasure was created on Chandoo’s page. [...]

  16. Jiakun says:

    Hello Chandoo,

    Great works! I learn a lot from this website. Here is the problem I met when I follow your tutorial: once I run and save this cool pivot calendar chart , the size of excel file will increase every time. Could you let me know how to figure it out? Thank you for your time in advance.

    An excel chart-fan from China. 

  17. Rob says:

    wow, love the calendar, i'm a newbie, found this site and it's amazing.

    Got it mostly figured out, but could do with help with your named range 'tblchosen'

    I can build the pivots, link the calendars together but can't see how to use index(tblchosen...) to pull through the productivity figures 

    appreciate any help

    thanks 

  18. Ninad says:

    Great. Miss the Today button.  Will try and figure a way to add this to the file.

  19. Mike says:

    I want to start the week on Monday, not Sunday (MTWTFSS).  Re-arranging the calendar tab works however, any month where the 1st is a Sunday starts on the second and totally omits Sun 1.  I have been tinkerign for a while, but can't seem to figure this out.

    • Mike says:

      Changing F2 on the 'Calcs' tab to 2 so that the week starts on Monday works.

      Cutting & pasting Sunday on the 'Pivot Calendar' tab and moving all cells up 1 row works.

      However, using April 2013 for example, you lose the 1st off of the pivot calendar so that the month starts on 2 April. What should happen is the first row should only show Sun 1 April and then the next row starts Mon 2 April. Still can't fugure out where the problem lies.

      • Mike says:

        "Further Enhancements:

        Adjust week start to Monday: Likewise, you can modify your formulas to adjust weekstart to Monday or any other day you fancy."

        I have tinkered with this previously with no success, does anyone know which formulas require tinkering, I have only succeeded in breaking this in an effort start a week on a Monday.

  20. [...] Interactivo    Artículo original var dd_offset_from_content = 50; var dd_top_offset_from_content = 0; Tags: 2013, calendario, [...]

  21. Jeroen says:

    Completely off topic, but how do you create those animated pictures in your tutorials? It is not a movie (like the Youtube movie), so what software do you use to create such high quality "animated" pictires? Thanks

  22. James says:

    This is fairly easy to do just using calendar formulas, which would be quicker, and doesn't need VBA? Am I missing something?

  23. [...] on how to generate an interactive calendar using pivot tables. Please check out Chandoo’s Interactive Pivot Table Calendar & Chart in Excel before reading this, as I want to go through how I used his method to adapt a calendar which was [...]

  24. FK says:

    Great tip shared by you... howevr would appreciate if you could mention in your tricks about excel version. The example above would work only in excel 2010 and above I believe. Please help me if there is any way we can use the tip in excel 2007 as well..
     
    Many Thanks,
    Regards,
    FK

  25. swissfish says:

    Hi, I'm going to give this a shot, but one small question before I do. Can a linked cell be updated based on the date that is selected from the calendar? The calendar is really cool and this would make is especially good to use (and easy and fast).
    Regards,
    swissfish.

  26. ElliJ says:

    This post is awesome, and using your instructions, I was able to get this to work with a pivot table that pulls directly from a Project Server database. It was a bit complicated to get the day to sum correctly, but I managed to finagle it. I hope you don't mind if I link back to you when I post my instructions.

    Thanks for giving me a starting point for this!

  27. Seb says:

    This is great, and pretty much everything I was looking for.

    However, I already have a large spreadsheet, and I want to include your worksheets in it. I copied all the worksheets and the Module 1, but I can't get it to work. What else do I need to transfer / update please?

  28. marycmjd says:

    Hello there, is it possible to use this pivot to produce a calendar style chart, with returns multiple data per date, which on the calendar then, when clicked links to the data to provide more background information? What do you think? I'd love if I could pivot when i need. thanks, m

  29. Andrew says:

    This is amazing and will work well for my calendar project! My question is, how can I expand the calendar to fit a standard sheet of paper?

  30. Paula says:

    Wow - this is so creative. I'm taking the basic idea and building a reservation calendar.
    Question: How do you get the month and year slicers on a different page than the pivot tables? I'd like to have my final calendar on a separate page from the pivot.

  31. Mack says:

    This is perfect...is there a way to add notes/tasks to the individual days?

  32. Jennifer says:

    Excel will not let me insert blank rows between lines in the pivot table. I am use Excel 2013 - is there a pivot table tools command that must be used?

    I can create the pivot table calender with a year spinner & month slicer but I do not see how to display the the attendance information that I have in the original data table.

    Thank you for the wonderful post and I am sorry for my lack of understanding...

  33. Christopher says:

    Excellent!

    Please show me how to add an alternative calendar to this calendar, Chinese or lunar calendar (and by lunar I don't mean phases of the moon), like what they still use in Asia

    Thanks
    Christopher

  34. […] Wow – what do you think of the interactive calendar chart demo above? To achieve this impressive effect you must have Excel 2010 because it utilises slicers, which is a feature introduced in Excel 2010. Find out how this treasure was created on Chandoo’s page. […]

  35. A.Maurizio says:

    Hello my name is Maurice, excuse me for my further request, but believe me, without your help priprio not know how to solve this problem.
    So: always using a chart positioned on an excel sheet I wanted to match each square (series) to a single cell, to create a perpetual calendar.
    Now everything works fine; except that for a fact, and it is this: In the calendar as you well know some numbers may not be apparent until certain conditions, which I solved by writing this "= O code (AA5 = DATE ( $ H $ 1; MONTH ($ AD $ 12) +1; 1)) and the game and done.
    Now I would like to achieve the same thing using the Chart; How can I do to make this happen! let me also just a practical example so that I can understand all the rest then I'll do; Thanks Greetings from A.Maurizio

    Link Program : Link: https://app.box.com/s/lhqva3eji0xcf2nmk8lxyki88tt1mi5t

  36. Ileana Dentremont says:

    Great info, thanks for sharing

  37. Mike Deryck says:

    Hi,

    I love your calendar however I am modifying it for use in displaying employee performance metrics on a day by day basis.
    I see where tblChosen and tblDates are named ranges however I cannot find them anywhere.
    Are they assigned to specific cells because I cannot tell.
    I see both of them in the Name Manager, which tells me what they refer to but does not give a value or cell location.

    • Hui... says:

      @Mike
      With the Names in the Name Manager
      Simply select the name
      Then click in the Refers To: box at the Bottom
      Excel will take you to where the Named Range is referring to

  38. […] Wow – what do you think of the interactive calendar chart demo above? To achieve this impressive effect you must have Excel 2010 because it utilises slicers, which is a feature introduced in Excel 2010. Find out how this treasure was created on Chandoo’s page. […]

  39. Nelson says:

    Hi, Chandoo
    This Pivot Calendar is an excellent idea. I’ve done one for myself using your guidelines. I just need something I’m not being able to do. I need that when I open the file the default date is set to today’s date. I know how to do it with conditional formatting. But I think I’ll need some vba coding for this. Can you please help me with this. Thanks in advance

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