^ Thanks
Nothing to add to that. Agree with all 4 points.
I have lived the life of trying to replace software w/ excel it sucks, this is what your life looks like…
=If(and(isna(if(A1>0,and(A2=A3,A4=A5, geomean(vlookup(A1:B7)/B2,normsdist(linest(A1^1/Index(match(A1,B2)),Date(correl,x,y)))))))))))))))))))
And all this does is look up the temp if its during the daytime. Plus the trial and error process of adding parenethsis until you’ve closed your 80 nested functions.
Please dont suggest writing the whole thing in VB because then you’re going to spend all your time debugging/ looking for the missing semicolon. No thx.
I’ve worked in a similar environment before. I figured the best approach for the small things is to make your boss think she is smarter than everybody else and any improvement is actually based on one of her ideas. Easier said than done, but it usually works when dealing with bosses that aren’t flexible, as long as the issues are small (like saving digitally instead of printing everything out).
As far as bigger issues (like changing the software that everybody is used to) you may be out of luck. It is truly frustrating, but a battle you probably shouldn’t fight in your position.
Heck, why do you think Bloomberg still looks and works pretty much like 1994 MS-DOS? To put it mildly, some old dogs aren’t that enthusiastic about learning new tricks.
This is in no way like what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to put an income statement in Column A, a journal entry in Columns B and C, and an “adjusted” income statement in Column D. The formula I need to use is =sum(a1:c1). Then I want to group them into “groups” using =sumif. Not exactly the most difficult formulas in the world.
Sounds like you’re really stretching, that could get very unstable – what if you need to erase something?
OMG, this is crazy. When I am looking for jobs, I make sure I can have opportuities to use/learn Excel functions in the new positions.
Not only Excel is a fun and efficient tool, being able to use it also adds value on the resume.
Could be worse, you could be using Sage 50.
I saw Sage 50 in some job descriptions. Is it that old and retarded?
Nowadays, lotta companies use SAP, PeopleSoft, ACCPAC…
Sage 50 used to be Peachtree.
Two totally different things. Sage/Peachtree is a bookkeeping tool, and it’s a pretty good one for small companies. (It’s extremely similar to Quickbooks.)
Once you have the books finished (in Sage or QB), you can download the financial statements and GL (which has all of the transactions for the year) into Excel. Then you can create pivot tables, subtotals, use the Ctrl+F function, cut-and-paste function, and reference other cells.
Or alternatively, you could print out all of the financials and GL, then enter them into Creative Solutions. Then you could spend the next 20 hours searching through all the paper docs to find what you want.
Yes that’s what your firm needs…multiple data capture / analysis / presentation spreadsheet every time someone gets a “brain fart” about how to best administer a routine accounting / tax task with little regard to quality assurance and repeatability and documentation. Excels strength is also it’s weakness in that it is so flexible the documents sprout like weeds and structure can break down. Just a counterpoint and perhaps something you are not giving due consideration of - that is the major reason firms have migrated to enterprise applications to support business processes!
^Good points. But
- It’s hard to mess up =sum(a1:c1), and
- The firm doesn’t have very strict workpaper structure anyway. It’s not like we’re using predefined templates for our workpapers, so the structure broke down long, long ago. If everybody were using a routine task, then I’d have less problem with it.
Harvard PHD’s probably thought so too: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/did-harvard-economists-excel-error-lead-economic-austerity-185852805.html
At the same token, I actually can relate. My strategy has been to slowly convert people by showing how efficient Excel can be – especially if you have a datawarehouse to pull stuff from automatically. I’m always trying to improve my Excel skills, as you can really do a lot of value-added stuff if you know how to get the data into Excel and then how to use Excel.
I wonder what will replace excel. It has been relevant for close to 2 decades now.
My former boss (a Charterholder too) used to double check my Excel work (each cell) with his calculator. He’d look at the formula, and then add up/multiply/whatever the boxes it referred to. Like he didn’t trust it. It was actually unbelievable. And it wasn’t like I was making mistakes, he just had no faith in a computer’s ability to add columns.
Nicest guy on Earth, and actually pretty bright, but he just couldn’t trust Excel.
Needless to say, the guy puts in ridiculous amounts of hours. Mostly spent verifying Excel.
^I actually do this… its has nothing to do with trusting the math but I’m worried about my references in complex functions, or maybe I should’ve divided something by 100 and forgot
Other than using the excel highlight function to count/sum/average, I’ll do it too (If it’s really slow, I’ll go ahead and manually add columns as well). For whatever reason, it’s easier to catch stuff with a calculator and a hard copy. After CFA, I can work the calculator pretty fast.
I would say it’s because I only have professionally used excel for about a year now but my boss does the same. Maybe I picked it up from him…
Fuck, my retired 60 year old mom runs KPI dashboard’s logging her jogs on excel along with her personal budgets and she is far from technologically savy.
I’d just quit, I couldn’t do that job without using excel and given the culture there, you’re just going to end up miserable.
I’ve been in that situation before and while ERP system implemetations enable businesses to streamline processes and improve data integrity they are not a panacea. Also they are extremely costly and time consuming, ultimately though as a business achieves scale, they are absolutely necessary. imo.
When I’m building some sort of calculation, I usuaully break it out where each cell is part of the solution. Once I confirm all those formulas individually do what they are supposed to, I’ll then combine it into one complex function which only uses 1 cell.