Excel is the leading spreadsheet software option for businesses around the globe and is a key part of Microsoft’s impressive family of client software, server software and services known as Microsoft 365.
For businesses, Excel has cemented its position as the go-to software for many different jobs ranging from the intricacies of using formulas and rules to interpret large data files right down to logging individual inventory items.
But there is still a huge proportion of businesses that don’t utilise it for what it was created for in the first place, saving time. So, what are some of the ways that Excel can save your business time?
Data entry and storage of information
The most basic use for a spreadsheet is to store a series of related information. This might be a list of clients with their contact email address, their postal address, contact number and maybe a note about what they do. This is the basis of a customer database and can easily be done on Excel. You can arrange the sheet by the different columns, alphabetically or sort in other ways.
Collecting business data
If your business has equipment, then you can use Excel to keep a log of it and key information about it. You can include purchase date, price and location as well as information such as when it was last serviced or checked. This means you can easily sort the data to see what information needs servicing at any time to arrange on your calendar.
Time optimising templates
You can easily create templates in Excel to share with staff and ensure everyone is working on the same system. This saves time as people don’t need to think about what information should be recorded – it is all on the template. And when information is later collated from all the staff, it is simply because all the sheets are in the same format with the same columns of data.
Data analysis
Moving beyond the basic spreadsheet, Excel has a huge range of formulas to help transform data from one representation to another. Maybe you have a sheet that records all of the businesses expenses and you’ll want to deduct this figure from the monthly incoming profit to see the overall profit – there’s a simple formula to help with that.
Charts
Perhaps the information you want to emphasise to others is too granular or difficult to interpret, well with a couple of clicks you can create a chart that represents your data in a visually pleasing and easy to understand format.
Solve math’s problems
The formulas are also ideal to solve a range of maths problems and gain a better understanding of what is going on within your business. With functions such as finding the sum, average or other options, it can analyse a large amount of data and provide answers and analysis you need in a fraction of the time it would take to work it out with a calculator.
Online access
When you make use of the OneDrive feature of Office, you can access your Excel data anywhere and can easily share it with other members of staff or management. This saves printing and posting or attaching to emails – you can simply share the location of the file. And if the other person has to make changes, you can set up permissions to allow this.
Know where you’re going
Excel easily lets you plan for the future of the business, set goals and organise information to support these. Trends on graphs, analysis of patterns, seeing what sells and what doesn’t – Excel can help better plan the next steps for the company.
If you are looking to extend your own knowledge of Microsoft Excel, or that of your team, staff or department, Elliott Training offer introduction, intermediate, advanced and expert excel training courses. In addition, we offer a range of IT courses which can help your business and your team. Want to book spaces on our courses or find out what’s on offer? Fill out a contact form or call us on 01454 203 355.