We continue with the example from the previous article. This time, we will use the Offset function to simulate different scenarios in a business model. The results will be the same, of course, but you can learn how handy this function can be.

• spreadsheet learning
• business models

Microsoft Excel 2010 has several powerful functions for planning scenarios and forecasting predictive outcomes in financial, statistical and data analysis applications. Examples include the Offset function, used to find a related value to a particular cell from a different part of the spreadsheet; the VLookup and HLookup functions, used to find an exact match without the need to sort the data table being searched; and the Match function, used to find the location of a matching item for use in other functions.

• spreadsheet learning
• business models

As we have seen before, when we analyze the income statement we need to be aware that some of the costs are variable and some others are fixed. The difference between one and the other is quite obvious: variable costs will follow the pattern of sales, since they are necessary to produce and sell more, whereas the fixed will tend to remain stable over time because they represent the structure of the company.

• spreadsheet learning
• financial analysis
• financial models

Bullet charts are an excellent tool to display actual performance versus a target. They can easily be used in a compact Dashboard with Key Performance Indicators (KPI), allowing data comparison across indicators since they use colored background bands to classify performance. Bullet charts are also quite easy to build, once you learn the mechanics. I'll demonstrate how to do that in this post.

• dashboards
• excel

Microsoft Excel is one of the most widely used business applications throughout the world. If Excel is your number crunching weapon of choice, you may like to expand upon it's basic functionality. Normally, those who build complex, graph-generating spreadsheets would like to maintain a bit more control over their creation. 

In this article, we'll see how you can "look under the hood" of Excel and make some modifications to alert user's when they're about to mess up their spreadsheet, automatically take actions, and validate user inputs.

• spreadsheet learning
• vba
• excel