The ultimate guide to learning Microsoft Excel and how it can be used

While most business owners spend money in buying software for taking care of day-to-day business operations such as accounting, inventory tracking, attendance management, etc., they overlook a relatively simple but extremely powerful software present in their computers – Microsoft Excel.

This software can take care of a range of business needs with its power-packed features.This article will help you learn several operations of Excel that will help you effectively manage basic, yet important needs of your business.

 

1. Scheduling

With Excel, you can create basic employee and resource schedules that you can colour-code and design to update automatically, on change of schedule(s). You can create weekly sheets and name the rows based on the hourly slots. You can fill each slot with the employee’s name for a given day. To create a schedule:

• Open Excel and choose the available scheduling template
• After choosing the available template, enter the employee’s name in the column. You can add his/her ID and title in the rows
• Opt for the colour-coded system, though most Excel templates do have such a system
• Once you are ready to schedule, assign the essential tasks first. You can also track leaves, absence, etc.

 

2. Charting

When you are presenting data to clients or stakeholders, representing them in the form of charts is effective.It makes data more visually-appealing. Excel allows you to easily make such charts. To do so:

• Input all the relevant data and select them
• Click ‘Insert’on the top menu
• Choose the ‘Recommended Chart’ option

 

3. Pivot Table

With Pivot Table, you can categorise tabular data. This makes it easy to evaluate large datasets to find out and pin point meaningful trends. To set up a pivot table:

• Begin by selecting your data and turning it into a table
• Go to 'Insert'
• Select ‘Pivot Table’
• Choose the Recommended ‘Pivot Table’ to sort out the data as desired

 

4. VLook Up

VLookUp stands for Vertical Lookup, which finds a value in one column and then finds the corresponding value in the same row of a different column. It allows you to search the table for a certain value and then outputs the associated value. It saves a lot of time and eliminates chances of human error, particularly when you are searching a large database for a certain value.

To use this function:

• Add a column to the spreadsheet to display the found data
• Select the first blank cell of the column
• Click ‘Insert’> Function and type VLookUp
• Once you do so, you get a dialogue box which will allow you to define the values of your lookup

 

5. Inventory Management

Inventory management is an essential part of business operation. Instead of buying separate software for managing inventory, you can easily do so with Excel. With integrated tools, features and formulas, you can use Excel to effectively manage your inventory. For this:

• Open Excel
• Click New
• Select the Business Tab
• Choose Inventory List with Recorder Highlighting template

These simple and effective Excel functions can help you better manage business operations and bring the much-needed efficiency in the process.

 

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