I started out with paper and pencil in little notebooks. I'd do daily pages of expenses and then tally it up weekly by hand to see what I see what I spent. With the emergence of the computer I graduated to an Excel sheet I created myself, like Herbgeek's, and I set up formulas to calculate totals for the month as well as a formula delta between budgeted and actual. I did that for several years.
Then I got into Dave Ramsey and used his tracking system for a short time, but found it cumbersome, so I followed tips from other Ramsey fans and emigrated to YNAB, which is what I do now. Unfortunately they went from an offline version of the software to a web-based version which I don't like as much, because I like knowing if there's an internet outage I can still access it, and also because it's now a yearly subscription instead of a one-time cost. But it's quite user-friendly, once you learn the basic set-up. And I love the reports I can generate.