Spreadsheets for Dummies

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i have to make a spreadsheet for a business for my excel class and i chose to do a yearly income for best buy. my first assignment is just creating rows and columns and finding 3 different formulas that i will be using, and entering in dummy data for now.

but so far my mind is blank on this task that i know is very easy. can someone help me get started (not asking for someone to do my assignment for me) just need a few ideas to get my mind going,

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I have Windows Media Edition on my computer, but I have some Microsoft word programs pre-installedon here like the processor and spreadsheet. (I think?)….. BUT I NEED the whole office programs like (office 2003, excel, access, and powerpoint) for my school assignments. I downloaded a free trial of these programs but it will be expiring soon. I would like to know, if I want to buy the program itself from the store, which version do I buy? The full or upgrade version, or do they have a student/teacher version which is cheaper? I was told that these programs should be on my computer already, but I haven’t found them anywhere. I tried looking..I think??? I just see my free ones that I downloaded. I’m REALLY confused and all help is appreciated. PLEASE explain things as simple as possible because I have no knowledge of computers at all. Thanks.

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Whether you work at an accounting firm, a marketing company, an auto dealership, a school attendance office, a manufacturing plant’s human resources department, or an office associated with city, county, state or federal government, chances are, you’ll be called upon to use and learn Excel.

Just about every workplace has a demand for Excel, the computing world’s most commonly used software program for comparative data analysis. Excel has been available in various incarnations for more than a decade. Each subsequent release takes the program to new territory.

Popularly known as the best spreadsheet program on the market, Excel is powerful, easy to use, and remarkably efficient. Excel is highly interactive. Its spreadsheet cells are arranged in a collection of rows and columns, each of which can hold a number, a text string, or a formula that performs a function, such as calculation. It’s easy to copy and move cells as well as modify formulas. The spreadsheet is displayed on the computer screen in a scrollable window that allows the document to be as deep or as wide as required.

Working for a major newspaper in Northern California, I was one of several reporters involved in the annual evaluation of our county’s economy. The job involved collecting data that would be punched into Excel spreadsheets that ultimately ranked information according to the category of statistics being reviewed.

The beauty of Excel, from the standpoint of newspaper research projects, is that you can use formulas to recalculate results by changing any of the cells they use. With this model, you can use the same spreadsheet data to achieve various results by simply defining and changing formulas as desired. It is this feature that makes Excel so useful in so many different arenas.

With a click of the mouse, we reporters were able to get answers to a wide variety of questions. Which employers had the greatest number of workers? Which ones had the highest amount of gross annual receipts? Which ones appeared to be growing and which ones had declining sales? What was the volume of real estate loans and had there been a decline or increase from the previous year?

We looked at local and national retail, services, financial institutions, government entities, agriculture, the wine industry, tourism and hospitality, manufacturing, residential and commercial real estate, everything imaginable.

Excel allowed us to examine ratios, percentages, and anything else we wanted to scrutinize. Finally, we were able to use Excel to compare the results to data from previous years.

Since reporters tend to be former English majors, most of those who worked on this annual project were more familiar with Microsoft® Word than any other software program. Therefore, most were required to undergo Excel training. For some, learning Excel was easier than for others. A few relied on guides such as Microsoft Excel Bible or Excel for Dummies. Some reporters underwent an Excel tutorial while others learned by doing.

Not only were the Excel spreadsheets crucial to the research, the format of each was published in the newspaper. Here is where some additional Excel functions came into play. Editors were able to make the spreadsheets more visually appealing by using colors and shading, borders and lines, and other features that made the spreadsheets easy for readers to decipher.

Wearing another of my several hats in the newsroom, I often wrote articles concerning the local job market. I found proficiency in Excel was a requirement for a wide variety of employment positions and that area recruiting firms offered their clients opportunities to take free or low-cost Excel tutorials in preparation for the workplace. Most employers expect job candidates to already know the software that the work will require and don’t want to have to train new hires.

Don’t kid yourself. If you’re seeking any kind of office work, you’ll need to know not only Microsoft Word but also Excel.

Excel and Microsoft are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation, registered in the U.S. and other countries.

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What I need to do is take all information from columns A through I, but only if the value in column H is a particular department. I bought an extensive Excel for dummies guide, but it’s not helping.
I don’t want to have to manually move selected data, I want it to auto transfer input data onto new workbooks within the spreadsheet, so for example, I put in expenses for April in the main tab, but then it auto transfers the same data row to a corresponding worksheet with a tab labeled for the department. Say I have 10 expenses and 3 are administrative and 7 are sales, I want the 3 admin rows to copy to a new book with an Admin tab to be totalled separately, and I want the 7 sales expenses to automatically be copied to a “sales expenses” tab, a separate tab in the same spreadsheet. This way I can see expenses broken down by department rather than by date or amount, and I can print copies of these reports for the heads of the departments, rather than showing them the expenses for the whole company. Does this make sense?
Part of the problem is that I don’t know the technical words for the process I’d like to create.

I want to take the information in row A1 through I1 and transfer it to a new workbook tab, but only if H1=Admin

For the life of me I can’t figure out what type of formula this would be!
Thanks Sarah M. I didn’t know that that option existed and I will be happy to use that for other reports in the future; however, when I do that, the sum at the bottom of the page reflects ALL entries, not just the sum for sales or admin, so I think I need to figure out how to filter the information and move it to a new tab to be totalled.

In today’s world, most of America is in debt. If you don’t want to be a part of this crowd, it’s important that you start to save your money as soon as possible to get out of that negative hole. If you’re already on a budget plan, that’s great. If not, it’s time that you jot down these helpful tips and start working on them.

Start by writing down everything

The first thing you should do when you start a successful budget is write down every single expense you have to pay each month. This ranges from your home mortgage to your xm radio account. Every single dollar will count toward this. When it comes to entertainment and food, make a good estimate. Most of the times it’s best to over-estimate, so that when you see how much you spend in a month, you’re not surprised.

How much do you make?

Once you write down every single expense you have made, write down how much you bring in each month. If your monthly income is random, make sure you just take a low average. This way you don’t over guess it and stay within your budget. Make sure that you also include how much you make on the side as well. If you have a side ebay business for example, include this as well. Every penny earned should be tallied.

Start your plan

When you finally get the dirty work out of the way, it’s time to make your spending plan. The first thing that you should pop in your head is that you should include savings in your budget. Without savings, you don’t have a complete budget. Make sure that you save at least 10% of your take home each month. This is usually a safe average that experts suggest.

Stop the impulse

We all are guilty of impulse buying. This needs to absolutely stop if you want to be set on a focused budget. Now, if you really want to, you can include a budget category that is listed as impulse. This way you will know how much you can spend on impulse buys such as fast food, those bath towels, or any other item you buy on the go. Remember, this is key and if you can follow this simple step, you can stretch your budget even further.

The most important part of your budget is to stay strong and focused. No one wants to create a budget and only stick to it for a few days and quit. This isn’t how you save money. Create your spreadsheet and post it around the house. Even throw in a spreadsheet in your purse or wallet. Every time you make a purchase, make a note of it. The easiest way to do this is to either use one credit card or save your receipts. If you use one credit card, simply save the receipt each month and note it next to your budget sheet. If you’re able to stay strong and focused, you’ll be on the budget road in no time.

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Starting a small business out of your home, offering products or services like business consulting, photography, selling on the web or a MLM? You are now faced with tracking all your expenses and revenues for your business and you certainly don’t have the money yet to engage a bookkeeper or accountant. If your business is a sole proprietorship, whether it be a Canadian Proprietorship or a US-based Proprietorship, you do not require an accountant to submit your company financials (books) to the IRS (USA) or Revenue Canada). Your business revenue and losses are reported as part of your annual personal income tax. For this small business start-up, you won’t need to buy fancy accounting software, like Quick Books or AccPac to track your business.

Only as part of incorporating Bizfare Enterprise Inc in 2005 was it a requirement to engage an accountant. My accountant did insist on using Quick Books software for my business accounting. Up until then using a simple spreadsheet template served my business accounting needs for over ten years. This simple spreadsheet accounting stood the test of multiple audits by Revenue Canada (CRA and Revenue Canada Goods and Services Tax. Both the hardcopy columnar pad and an electronic spreadsheet version of my financial books were accepted by Revenue Canada. (BTW the audits disclosed more ways for me to claim back additional taxes for the previous three years! Now that’s my type of audit!)

In your new start-up business venture, you likely will generate somewhere between 10 to 30 accounting transactions per month. These transactions would be items like Expense, Revenue (sales), Liability (Loan) type transactions and Sales Tax (Federal + State/Provincial) Collection/Deductions. These transactions are further broken down into various Business Accounts. All the Accounts you set up for your business is called a Chart of Accounts. Recording your business financial transactions (Journal Entries) can be executed with pen and ink on an accounting columnar pad or electronically with your computer using a spreadsheet program (MS Excel, Open Office, Star Office).

Whether you employ electronic or hardcopy media, you need to develop a simple Journal template to create your Business Synoptic Journal. This Synoptic Journal format has the advantage of allowing you a complete view of all your individual journal entry transactions against all your various Business Accounts. Creating this Synoptic Journal is easier to do than you think and requires no prior accounting or bookkeeping knowledge.

TIP #1: You could further reduce the accounting line items (Journal Entries) by consolidating like items such as ‘all the Sales for the month’ and ‘all parking receipts for the month’ into one totaled line item for the month.

Where do you start to identify the various Business Accounts required for your Synoptic Journal?

If you currently work for a company or government, secure of one of their employee expense forms. Look at each of the areas identified as expenses – meals, mileage, hotel accommodations, taxi, car rental, telephone & cell phone, air fare, office supplies, etc. This is an excellent place to identify the various Business Expense Accounts you need to set up for your business accounting books. To complete your business Chart of Accounts, include a Business Bank Account, Sales, COGS (Cost of Goods Sold), Sales Tax Collection, Marketing Expense and others as required. Each of these Accounts will be a listed as a title across the top of each column of your Synoptic Journal. Each row (line item) will be the individual journal transactions entered by you. The journal transactions are grouped and summarized for each business month; usually, January through December.

So your Synoptic Journal would look something like this Sample Synoptic Journal at http://picasaweb.google.com/carl.chesal/BookkeepingTemplate.

The column headings might be in this order (from left to right):

DATE | DESCRIPTION | BANK DEPOSITS | BANK WITHDRAWALS | SALES REVENUE | COGS | SALES TAX COLLECTED & REMITTED | OFFICE SUPPLIES EXPENSE | EXPENSE #2 | EXPENSE #3 | ETC

TIP #2: Unless your business is Incorporated or an LLC, you don’t need to go through the expense of opening a business account with your bank. Usually Business accounts charge a higher monthly fee, charge for printing checks (cheques) and don’t offer any interest on your monthly account balance. Instead, open a separate personal bank account (maybe savings). This will show the ‘taxman’ that you are keeping the business separate from your personal banking. Remember you are a sole proprietor and all your business income (and losses) are to be applied directly to your personal income tax submission ( a s per IRS and CRA).

To save you time and make is very simple, I have already created a simple spreadsheet Synoptic Journal template that performs all the calculations for each month and rolls up the 12 business months so it can easily be included in your annual personal income tax preparation. This Synoptic Journal template has Debit/Credit checks and balances, tracks sales taxes, mileage and totals each account for your entire fiscal year. If you want this FREE Bookkeeping template, you can get it at Communicate Innovate. With a few key strokes, which will help identify yourself, I will gladly send you this FREE Synoptic Journal Template and also any future Small Business Tips.

TIP #3: One Rule of Accounting is that every time you record a journal entry (line item which applies the transaction against the appropriate business accounts) the Debits and Credits MUST REMAIN EQUAL at ALL Times. This Debit Equals Credit calculator is built into this FREE Bookkeeping Template. When you have completed entering a line item (journal transaction), check to ensure that the amount the the Debit cell equals the amount in the Credit cell. If they are not equal, you have not entered the amounts properly in your journal transaction. Correct the problem before entering your next journal entry.

You are now equipped to capture your business financial books with some simple accounting software. Happy bookkeeping! And Happy Selling!