Mastering Excel: an invaluable skill for any accountant

Upon telling someone you are in the field of accounting, the immediate response you receive 90% of the time is "you must be good with numbers." This is the unspoken guise of the accounting profession, designed to mask our greatest secret: we're not necessarily good with numbers, just Microsoft Excel. While adding-tapes and calculators are still familiar to many auditors and tax preparers, Excel is by far the most widely used tool by all accountants. That is why it is so important to master many of its most useful functions as early as possible in your career. There's nothing more satisfying than putting together a macro that even your boss didn't know how to create, making a report much easier to generate. While working as a financial analyst preparing regulatory reports for a bank, I often dealt with a large amount of data pertaining to loans, deposits, and investments. During my first few months on the job, I generated countless analyses and reports using pivot tables, if statements, lookup functions, and subtotals. All of these functions were previously unknown to me, but proved invaluable in turning a massive amount of data into useful financial information. Here are a few resources to help you maximize the tools Excel has to offer:

• One of the many consulting companies that provide Excel tools and tips is Finney Learning Systems. At their website www.therightway.com/MSExcel.aspx you'll find a directory of free instructional videos and pdf lessons organized by topic. I found this site to be very informative and the lessons quickly and concisely illustrate some of the most widely used tools in Excel.


• Perhaps you find yourself in the same situation I am in. Over the past few years I've grown very familiar with Windows 2003, but since upgrading my computers to Windows 7 and Vista, I'm at a loss as to where to find things in Excel 2007. http://www.youtube.com/ offers a Cliff's Notes - like answer to any question I may have. For example, if I can't remember how to run a scenario analysis, I can just search "Excel scenario manager" in youtube and get 11 pages of videos illustrating how to execute this function.


• Microsoft has an entire suite of free Finance and Accounting Excel templates available, to assist in everything from personal finance and sales management to financial statements and budgets. Just visit http://office.microsoft.com/ and go to the templates page.

As accountants, we'll always rely on Excel, so it's never a bad idea to keep expanding your knowledge of Excel functionality. That way, you'll be ready to apply it whenever an accounting challenge arises.