Excel

All worksheets shared on FiscalShare are in Excel.

If you look up “spreadsheet software” on Wikipedia, you may be astonished at how many spreadsheet applications actually exist.  That being said, Microsoft’s Excel is pretty much the “Zipper” and “Kleenex” of the spreadsheet world:  a brand name that has become synonymous with a product category.

There is no need to debate the merits and drawbacks of various spreadsheet applications.  The fact of the matter is that most businesses use Excel, and that is true in education business as well.  Ultimately it does not matter so much which software is used to analyze data.  It is not the software that is key, but rather the practitioner’s understanding.  Do they have the requisite knowledge of the business practices that generated their data and do they really know how to analyze it for future decision-making?

Excel has been accused of ruining the world.  That might be an overstatement.  But poor knowledge of Excel combined with a lack of clarity about the data being analyzed can ruin or at least severely sidetrack your career.  That’s one of the reasons I started FiscalShare.  By sharing our business practices we can also help each other by providing a second and third set of eyes.  It also means that the spreadsheets shared here, though checked for obvious errors, cannot be guaranteed to be correct.  But the more people that review them, the likelier it is that these spreadsheets are reliable.  Of course we cannot be responsible for what you do with a spreadsheet once you get a hold of it!

Excel Tips and Tricks

Turn VLOOKUP into a formula array