Excel for CFOs’ Post

Stop wasting your finance teams time 7 common myths why Excel is best for budgeting and reporting These 7 reasons are often used as to why we don’t need FP&A software 1. Excel is free 2. There are no mistakes in Excel   3. Excel is fast 4. Everyone can use Excel 5. It is easy to edit 6. Everyone can collaborate in Excel 7. This is what we have always done why change it? If you believe these are true, consider: 1. The cost of staff time producing budget, forecast and monthly report models in Excel. 2. 80% of Excel models have mistakes (these can be business critical) 3. How long does it take to update models for new data? 4. Each team member uses Excel differently it is not standardised 5. Can you easily change the model for company changes? 6. Often requires multiple spreadsheets, not easily consolidated, time consuming 7. How many issues in the budgeting and reporting cycles have there been? FP&A software can free up staff time from repetitive tasks so they can add more value to the business. Sticking with Excel may not be the best FP&A solution. There are plenty of dedicated solutions for all different sizes of company. ✍️ Thoughts? Share yours below ➕ Follow Quentin Jackson for more content like this #CorporatePlanning #FPA #FinancialPlanning #FinancialAnalysis #FinancialForecasts #RollingForecasts #Budgeting

7 common myths why Excel is best for budgeting & reporting...

Why Accountants Love Excel ?? What do You Think? If you’re new to accounting or just curious about how Excel fits in, here’s a quick rundown of why Excel is a MUST HAVE tool in the accounting world! 🔹 Excel Basics for Accounting Excel’s grid-like structure makes it a natural fit for organizing financial data, tracking transactions, and performing calculations. With its simple layout, you can set up tables, create columns for income and expenses, and use formulas to handle complex calculations – all without a calculator. Common Accounting Tasks in Excel 1. Transaction Tracking: Log every sale, expense, and transaction in one place. 2. Budgeting : Compare planned vs. actual spending, helping you stick to budgets and identify areas for improvement. 3. Financial Reporting : Summarize data, spot trends, and generate reports – all from a single spreadsheet. 🔹 Key Excel Functions Every Accountant Should Know - SUM`=SUM(A2:A10)` - Adds up numbers in a column or row. - AVERAGE `=AVERAGE(B2:B10)` - Finds the average value. - IF `=IF(A2>B2, "Profit", "Loss")` - Quickly categorize data based on conditions. - VLOOKUP `=VLOOKUP(value, table, column, FALSE)` - Look up information in big tables, like finding customer names by invoice numbers. - PivotTables – Summarize and analyze large data sets, like monthly sales or department expenses. 🔹 Excel Features for the Accounting Win. - Data Filtering: Focus on specific entries, like transactions by category or date. - Conditional Formatting: Automatically highlight high expenses or overdue items with color-coding. - Charts and Graphs: Visualize financial trends with bar charts, pie charts, or line graphs for easier analysis. #Accounting #ExcelTips #Finance #Productivity #Data

🚀 6 Essential Excel Functions for Accountants: Boost Your Productivity! 🚀 Excel is a crucial tool for accountants looking to streamline financial processes, automate calculations, and ensure data accuracy. Mastering these essential Excel functions will significantly improve efficiency and help you deliver more precise financial reports. Here are the top 6 Excel functions that every accountant should know: 1️⃣ VLOOKUP / HLOOKUP Search for values vertically (VLOOKUP) or horizontally (HLOOKUP) across massive datasets. These functions are perfect for financial audits, matching transactions, and reconciling accounts in seconds. 💡 2️⃣ SUMIF / SUMIFS Add up values based on specific criteria, such as date ranges or transaction types. These functions make it easy to track the totals of income or expenses across multiple categories, simplifying the management of financial statements. 3️⃣ IFERROR Replace error messages with customized outputs to ensure cleaner reports. This function is ideal for keeping your spreadsheets error-free and presenting professional reports to clients or management. 🧮 4️⃣ PIVOT TABLES Summarize large data sets effortlessly, making it easy to generate dynamic financial reports. Pivot Tables allow you to track revenue, expenses, and cash flow with just a few clicks, perfect for detailed financial analysis. 5️⃣ TEXT & CONCATENATE Format dates, currency, or merge text fields for polished, professional reports. With the CONCATENATE function, you can combine cells into a single string, while TEXT allows you to convert numbers into text with proper formatting. 6️⃣ XLOOKUP An advanced version of VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP is more flexible and powerful, allowing you to search for data both horizontally and vertically across spreadsheets. This is essential for handling complex datasets and ensuring financial accuracy across records. 💡 Excel is an indispensable tool for accounting professionals, and mastering these functions will elevate your ability to manage data efficiently, generate accurate reports, and streamline financial processes. #ExcelTips #Accounting #FinancialManagement #FinancialAnalysis #DataAutomation #ExcelForAccountants #AccountingSoftware Pro Tip: Leverage these functions with dynamic formulas and automation to reduce manual errors and increase the speed of financial reporting.

6 days ago Excel Shortcuts and Formulas Every Accountant Should Know! Excel is a game-changer in accounting, but only if you know how to use it efficiently. Here are the shortcuts and formulas I wish I had learned earlier—they’ve saved me hours and improved my accuracy: 🧵 Essential Shortcuts Ctrl + T: Convert data into a table for easy sorting and filtering. Ctrl + E: Flash Fill to auto-format or extract patterns from data. Ctrl + D: Duplicate the cell above—perfect for repetitive entries. Alt + H + O + I: Auto-adjust column widths for cleaner spreadsheets. Alt + H + B + A: Apply all borders to tables for professional formatting. Alt + [Duplicates]: Highlight and manage duplicates effortlessly. Alt + N + V: Instantly create a Pivot Table for powerful data analysis. Ctrl + ;: Add today’s date without typing it manually. F4: Repeat your last action (e.g., formatting or inserting rows). 🔢 Must-Know Accounting Formulas =SUM(range): Quickly calculate totals for income or expenses. =AVERAGE(range): Find average values—ideal for KPIs like AR collection times. =IF(condition, true, false): Perform conditional analysis, such as flagging overdue invoices. =VLOOKUP(value, table, col_index, [range]): Search for values in a table—great for matching GL codes. =XLOOKUP(lookup_value, lookup_array, return_array): A more powerful and flexible alternative to VLOOKUP for searching data. =ROUND(value, digits): Simplify calculations to two decimal places for clean financial reporting.

Finance and Accounting Financial services and financial accounting are the areas of finance that rely on and benefit from Excel spreadsheets the most. In the 1970s and early 1980s, financial analysts would spend weeks running advanced formulas either manually or (beginning in 1983) on programs like Lotus 1-2-3. Now, you can perform complex modeling in minutes with Excel. Walk through the finance or accounting department of any major corporate office, and you will see computer screens filled with Excel spreadsheets crunching numbers, outlining financial results, and creating budgets, forecasts, and plans used to make major business decisions. Most users know that Excel can add, subtract, multiply, and divide, but it can do much more with advanced IF functions when coupled with VLOOKUP, INDEX-MATCH-MATCH, and pivot tables. Marketing and Product Management While marketing and product professionals look to their finance teams to do the heavy lifting for financial analysis, using spreadsheets to list customer and sales targets can help you manage your salesforce and plan future marketing strategies based on past results. Using a pivot table, users can quickly and easily summarize customer and sales data by category with a quick drag-and-drop. Why Is Excel an Important Tool? Using Excel for business has almost no limits for applications. Here are some examples: When planning a team outing to a baseball game, you can use Excel to track the RSVP list and costs. Excel creates revenue growth models for new products based on new customer forecasts. When planning an editorial calendar for a website, you can list out dates and topics in a spreadsheet. When creating a budget for a small product, you can list expense categories in a spreadsheet, update it monthly and create a chart to show how close the product is to budget across each category. You can calculate customer discounts based on monthly purchase volume by product. Users can summarize customer revenue by product to find areas where to build a stronger customer relationships. Use complex calculation methods, like Sharpe ratios. #snsinstitutions #snsdesignthinkers #designthinking

🔍 Check out this insightful article from Velixo on using Excel for consolidated reporting with eliminations! 📊💡 It offers practical tips and strategies to streamline your reporting process. A must-read for anyone in finance or accounting! What are your thoughts on leveraging Excel for these tasks? Let’s discuss! 💬 #Finance #Excel #Reporting #Velixo

Excel Shortcuts and Formulas Every Accountant Should Know! Excel is a game-changer in accounting, but only if you know how to use it efficiently. Here are the shortcuts and formulas I wish I had learned earlier-they've saved me hours and improved my accuracy: ■ Essential Shortcuts Ctrl + T: Convert data into a table for easy sorting and filtering. Ctrl + E: Flash Fill to auto-format or extract patterns from data. Ctrl + D: Duplicate the cell above-perfect for repetitive entries. Alt + H + O + I: Auto-adjust column widths for cleaner spreadsheets. Alt + H + B + A: Apply all borders to tables for professional formatting. Alt + [Duplicates]: Highlight and manage duplicates effortlessly. Alt + N + V: Instantly create a Pivot Table for powerful data analysis. Ctrl + ;: Add today's date without typing it manually. F4: Repeat your last action (e.g., formatting or inserting rows). Must-Know Accounting Formulas =SUM(range): Quickly calculate totals for income or expenses. =AVERAGE(range): Find average values-ideal for KPIs like AR collection times. =IF(condition, true, false): Perform conditional analysis, such as flagging overdue invoices. =VLOOKUP(value, table, col_index, [range]): Search for values in a table-great for matching GL codes. =XLOOKUP(lookup_value, lookup_array, return_array): A more powerful and flexible alternative to VLOOKUP for searching data. =ROUND(value, digits): Simplify calculations to two decimal places for clean financial reporting. #Excel #Accountant #Internal Audit

Excel Shortcuts and Formulas Every Accountant Should Know! Excel is a game-changer in accounting, but only if you know how to use it efficiently. Here are the shortcuts and formulas I wish I had learned earlier—they’ve saved me hours and improved my accuracy: 🧵 Essential Shortcuts Ctrl + T: Convert data into a table for easy sorting and filtering. Ctrl + E: Flash Fill to auto-format or extract patterns from data. Ctrl + D: Duplicate the cell above—perfect for repetitive entries. Alt + H + O + I: Auto-adjust column widths for cleaner spreadsheets. Alt + H + B + A: Apply all borders to tables for professional formatting. Alt + [Duplicates]: Highlight and manage duplicates effortlessly. Alt + N + V: Instantly create a Pivot Table for powerful data analysis. Ctrl + ;: Add today’s date without typing it manually. F4: Repeat your last action (e.g., formatting or inserting rows). 🔢 Must-Know Accounting Formulas =SUM(range): Quickly calculate totals for income or expenses. =AVERAGE(range): Find average values—ideal for KPIs like AR collection times. =IF(condition, true, false): Perform conditional analysis, such as flagging overdue invoices. =VLOOKUP(value, table, col_index, [range]): Search for values in a table—great for matching GL codes. =XLOOKUP(lookup value, lookup array, return array): A more powerful and flexible alternative to VLOOKUP for searching data. =ROUND(value, digits): Simplify calculations to two decimal places for clean financial reporting. #Copy

We need to rethink the place of the IT department in a company’s financials. For the longest time the IT Department has been thought of as a “Cost Center”. A money sink. A black hole, simply infrastructure. A cost that must be endured. All of this is wrong. At the most basic, IT is a “revenue enhancer.” Example: How was accounting 60 years ago? A large staff, a group of people doing keypunch, a large area dedicated to filing cabinets, difficult month-end balancing. How about now? Spreadsheets, allowing reporting that was thought of as impossible, at a speed which would have been mind-blowing to manager back then. The ability to know up-to-the-minute financials allowing a company to pivot on a dime if need be. Reports rendered visually… All these IT innovations allowed company profits to greatly increase, making the company more agile, slimming down manpower…on and on. How has CRM software affected sales departments? Easier tracking, reporting, freeing up salespeople to spend more time selling than tracking customers in a rolodex somewhere. Allowing companies to retain IP during employee turnover. Email? I don’t even have to explain that. File servers and document retention. Legal hold? On and on and on. At its most basic, IT departments allow companies, through technology, to maximize profit and allow the company to be more agile for future growth. CEO’s, CFO’s. Take note.