Not Just Numbers

99% of Excel users get this wrong - How do you lay out your data?

2012-02-23T16:52:00.002Z

"Learn the fundamentals of the game and stick to them. Band-Aid remedies never last." Jack Nicklaus (Champion US golfer) When someone comes to me with a problem in an existing spreadsheet, the problem is invariably in the layout of the data. The spreadsheet is built for one purpose and works OK for that until something slightly different is required and it proves almost impossible to get

Connecting with those we're trying to help

2012-02-13T18:52:00.000Z

"The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it." Mark Twain Constantly, as accountants, we need to communicate important messages to non-accountants and, in doing so, we risk coming across as detached number-crunchers, resulting in our message not really connecting. No matter what our technical ability, if we do not have this power to connect, we don't get the chance to add

Is fiddling with Excel a good or a bad use of time?

2012-01-27T10:56:00.000Z

I'd really like to know what everyone thinks about this question - because I am not sure myself. I have always fiddled with Excel until I got it to do what I wanted. For me, personally, it has worked out very well as I turned the skills I developed as a result into a successful business! But was it good for my employers at the time? Granted, they got some good spreadsheet solutions in the end

It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it!

2012-01-17T17:47:00.001Z

One of the most common misconceptions I come across when helping others to get the most out of Excel is the belief that it is all about learning new functions and capabilities. This misconception is compounded as most Excel training will teach you new functions and capabilities! My Pivot Table Training videos are no exception to this! Where learning new functions is most certainly useful, it

Merry Christmas - Take some time to stop and think!

2011-12-22T17:24:00.000Z

Just a quick blog post to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year. And, before you go, here is a Christmas-themed video from BMW that also, I think, illustrates quite nicely what happens if you fly around at break-neck speed without stopping to think about whether you might be able to do things in a better way: I hope you all have a great break and

Accountants - A new way to improve your Excel use

2011-12-19T16:10:00.000Z

In my last post I mentioned a new service that I was about ready to launch that would help accountants in practice to significantly improve their use of Excel, and therefore their profitability. Well, Excellent Accountancy is now live with an amazing offer for those who act before Christmas. If you're a UK-based accountant in practice, you really need to look at this as it could seriously

Apologies and Missed Opportunities

2011-12-09T18:20:00.001Z

First of all an apology for such a long delay without a post. I have been working on a new service for accountancy practices to help them get the best out of Excel which has been taking up a big chunk of my time. I can't say a lot about it at the moment, but for those of you who run accountancy practices in the UK, keep your eye out for the launch in the next few days as there is an introductory

Spreadsheet help and assistance

2011-08-09T15:16:00.000+01:00

I know many of you read this blog for Excel tips and will usually build your spreadsheets yourself, but I realised recently that you might not be fully aware of the other ways I can help with your spreadsheet requirements. I have therefore added an additional page to the blog, see the new tab above - Need some help with your spreadsheet? Whether you are after ongoing email advice when you're

EXCEL TIP: Eliminating #DIV/0! and other errors automatically using ISERROR

2011-07-27T14:03:00.039+01:00

Excel is great for being able to apply the same calculation consistently by simply copying the formula to all of the relevant cells, however often there are times where some of the data isn't how we would like it and the formula throws up an error. The most common of these is the #DIV/0! error that Excel returns when trying to divide a number by zero. As Excel struggles with the concept of

EXCEL TIP: Using the SUMIF function to interrogate lists

2011-07-18T18:05:00.000+01:00

How many times do we need to pull out a particular category of numbers from a list and add them up. Well, you might not be aware that Excel has a pretty simple function designed to do just that. The SUMIF function can be used to pull out departmental information from a trial balance, sales information from a transaction list for a particular salesman, department or division (as in the example we

Need a Spreadsheet?

2011-07-06T16:46:00.000+01:00

Many readers have used my Spreadsheets by Email service when they have wanted a spreadsheet built to their requirements, so I thought I had better ensure that readers were aware of some significant changes to the presentation of the service (no changes to the quality of the work, or who carries it out). As the service is very useful both to those who know Excel well and need a little help (I

A business plan from my 12 year old son!

2011-06-03T20:58:00.000+01:00

I received the following email from my 12 year old son this morning. I was at work, and he was home, obviously putting his half-term holiday to good use! Subject: I know how to make over £30.00 at school in 6 weeks"Everybody is interested in tech decks at school and they all say the cheapest place to get them is crazy clearance. They are apparently £3.00 each at crazy clearance. I have found a

Working over the weekend?

2011-05-27T18:45:00.000+01:00

We're about to finish for the Whitsun bank holiday weekend here in the UK, and I'm curious how many of you are going to be working over the weekend. Or what would be more interesting is how many of you will actually get a weekend completely free of work (for those of you not in the UK, will you get Saturday and Sunday?). That means not checking work emails - completely switching off from work.

EXCEL TIP: The dollar sign ($) in a formula - Fixing cell references

2011-05-20T13:07:00.002+01:00

I want to cover something today that I use all of the time but seems to be understood in varying degrees by clients I work with. I am talking about use of the dollar sign ($) in an Excel formula. Relative cell references When you copy and paste an Excel formula from one cell to another, the cell references change, relative to the new position: EXAMPLE: If we have the very simple formula "=A1"

A New Era for Not Just Numbers

2011-05-20T10:34:00.000+01:00

Sunrise over Seaham Hello again to regular readers who might be wondering where I've been. No blog post for over two months! Well, I've been busy reviewing how all the various parts of my business fit together - including this blog. Not Just Numbers was originally intended to generate traffic for my other businesses, however it is difficult to justify the effort required purely on this basis -

Automating regular procedures (e.g. month-ends) - the real benefits

2011-03-11T15:11:00.002Z

Ah, month-ends, those joyous occasions where we get to reflect on the successes of the last month's results and toast the even better ones to come.... What! Not your experience of month-ends? How about a desperate panic of late nights trawling through those familiar journals and spreadsheets to hopefully pull together a set of management accounts that makes some kind of sense? Does that sound

How long have you been using Excel?

2011-01-26T17:20:00.001Z

I came across this short video celebrating the first 25 years of Microsoft Excel and it got me to reminiscing about my early days with spreadsheets. I didn't start using Excel myself until 1998 when the company I was working for went through a management buyout and I decided to do the forecasts for the post-buyout company in Excel rather than Lotus-123, and bring the rest of the accounts

Just for fun - How I created my Excel Christmas Quiz

2011-01-18T12:29:00.001Z

Before Christmas you may have seen my Excel Christmas Quiz which you can still download here (although the questions might no longer be appropriate for the season, the prize is still valuable until the end of January). I thought it might be useful in this post to tell you how it was made. This post will make more sense if you download the spreadsheet first. The Quiz The quiz element is pretty

JK Rowling on the benefits of failure

2011-01-11T16:40:00.000Z

Happy New Year to everyone. Sorry for being a bad blogger! It's 11th January and I am just getting round to my first post of the year. Even then I'm still catching up so it is a short one just to show you a video I came across today. I certainly found it both entertaining and inspiring - some of you may have seen it before. In the current economic climate, I am sure that many of us might feel

Excel Christmas Quiz 2010

2010-12-23T15:36:00.001Z

A Merry Christmas to all of our readers.Last year I created a Christmas Quiz in Excel just for fun (last year’s quiz), but it proved very popular so I thought I should do it again this year.This time though I thought it might be nice to add a little Christmas present if you get them all right. I won’t tell you what it is and spoil the surprise, but you will find it very useful if you need a

Lessons I didn't learn until I ran my own business - Lesson 2

2010-11-30T17:44:00.000Z

Welcome to the second lesson in my occasional series, 5 Lessons I didn't learn until I ran my own business. Lesson 2: Flexibility is far more important than you think In the early days of my business, I wanted to make sure I had all of the building blocks in place for the business I wanted in the future. In many cases I made long term commitments to keep the costs down so that I would have a

Off-the-shelf or bespoke software - How to decide

2010-11-18T13:30:00.001Z

I have been approached by a client to build a project planning spreadsheet, but given the client's very general requirements, I have pointed him towards an off-the-shelf, on-line solution that will be a much more cost-effective solution for him. This got me to thinking about that choice. My previous post on how to decide between a spreadsheet or a database made the assumption that you had

Spreadsheet or database - How to decide

2010-11-02T18:18:00.000Z

There are those who will tell you that every application should be a database and that spreadsheets should never be used, whereas others will look to address every problem with a spreadsheet. How do you decide what is best for your specific requirement? As with most of these things, neither is right for every application. In this post I want to give you my thoughts about when I believe you

EXCEL TIP: The IF Statement made simple

2010-10-21T09:30:00.002+01:00

One of the functions I use most often in Excel is the IF statement. This function is very powerful and to many can seem very complicated, whereas to others it is deceptively simple and its power can be underestimated. The basic IF statement The basic format of an IF statement is as follows: =IF(if this is true,return this,otherwise return this) Example: =IF(A2>3,"Greater than three","Not

Lessons I didn't learn until I ran my own business - Lesson 1

2010-10-13T18:30:00.000+01:00

This post follows on from an earlier one, 5 Lessons I didn't learn until I ran my own business where I listed the top lessons I have learned since starting my own business nearly 10 years ago. I promised I would revisit them in more detail later, so here goes with Lesson 1. Lesson 1: The salesmen and women were right. Sales must come first. This is a tough one to swallow from a financial