Microsoft Excel tips and tricks for accountants

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A Better Way to Gauge Profitability

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Return-on-equity (ROE) is the correct profit metric to evaluate the performance of a business. However, the primary emphasis on financial ratio analysis must be on operating performance. The “advanced” version of the DuPont model remedies the original model’s failure to cleanly separate the effects of operating and financing...

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June 1, 2017

Microsoft Excel: How to reference vertical cells horizontally

A handy trick makes it possible to reference vertical data horizontally.

May 1, 2017

Microsoft Excel: Rules for designing Excel workbooks

By following a common set of spreadsheet design rules, companies can produce more consistent workbooks that may be easier to review, edit, and use by others in their organizations.

April 1, 2017

Using Excel and Benford’s Law to detect fraud

This Technology Workshop shows how to use Microsoft Excel to determine whether the numbers in a data set follow Benford’s curve or point to possible malfeasance.

April 1, 2017

What fonts work best in Excel?

When it comes to choosing the best font for displaying both text and numbers, the font you choose matters.

March 1, 2017

New mapping tools on Excel 2016

Microsoft Excel 2016 has two new mapping capabilities.

February 1, 2017

Microsoft Excel: 3 ways to calculate internal rate of return in Excel

Excel offers three functions for calculating the internal rate of return, and I recommend you use all three.

January 1, 2017

Microsoft Excel: Use Excel to quickly count workdays

Excel’s NETWORKDAYS function (available in Excel 2010 and later editions) returns the number of working days in a specified period of time.

January 1, 2017

Data mining your general ledger with Excel

Learn how to use Microsoft Excel to unearth and interpret the wealth of data hidden in the general ledger.

December 1, 2016

Microsoft Excel: How to turn off Excel’s AutoFormat feature

A few options exist for controlling some of Excel’s AutoFormat behavior.

November 1, 2016

Microsoft Excel: Printing all sheets

Tips for printing all of the worksheets in an Excel workbook at one time.

October 1, 2016

Excel: Keyboarding for speed

With speed in mind, here are a few of my favorite Excel keyboard commands. How many do you already know?

September 1, 2016

Excel: The right format is the wrong format

I can’t figure out why the decimals and commas in my Excel-based cash flow statement (using the “Accounting Format”) don’t line up properly. What’s going on?

August 1, 2016

Excel: This forecast was bound to happen

Excel 2016 provides a new tool called Forecast Sheet that automatically calculates and plots your upper and lower forecast boundaries based on your desired level of confidence.

July 1, 2016