In this short post, we will learn the five key excel skills that are needed for accountants.  Essentially these are the five features of the program that every accountant should know.  We will go through each of them one by one and you will see how it leads to improved efficiency and productivity in your everyday work.

Understanding and Using Formulas:

Excel 2010 has functions that are present under various categories.  It is not correct to say that an accountant should learn each and every function in Excel. For example we will not find it convincing that an accountant should learn “Engineering Functions”.  Learning a few of them that are regularly used can help automate tasks.

Excel’s built in formulas come with help and examples so they are really easy to understand.  In fact they are great help in preparing templates (for example Managing attendance with Excel zoom’s Attendance Template) for performing repeating calculations.  Accountants will find functions related to Date and Time, Finance, Math and Trigonometry.  Additionally, Statistical, Lookup and Reference functions are used quite frequently.

MS excel also offers option to create user defined functions through VBA (Visual Basic). With VBA, created function can be called and used in the workbooks like a built in function.  So if you find something missing from Excel, just write a VBA function for that or, better yet, create an Excel Add-In similar to our Excel Audit Tick Mark Toolbar.

Managing Data with Tables:

Tables helpful in managing data in your worksheet and yet another great Feature of MS Excel. Learning how to use a Table can be a really helpful skill for accountants. Table provides us some key features that make slicing and dicing data easy. For example with tables, filtering table becomes a breeze. Similarly, we have automatic subtotal in the footer row. We can format it the way we want and choose color schemes from the template.

The real benefit of Tables becomes evident when it comes to write formulas. With tables, we don’t to update ranges in the formulas. They are automatically updated with new data being entered. Another benefit when we are using tables is that Table formatting is automatically applied to new data appended to the table.

Data once sorted in table can have subtotal added to them. This is in addition to the row and column that we insert from the Table Tab. So learn how to use Table and you will improve your efficiency a lot.

Manipulating data with Pivot Tables and Power Pivot:

If an accountant is not able drill down its data to a meaningful level, he can certainly do it with Pivot Tables. Pivot Table is tool that is used to create instant summaries from Lists as data source. While using Pivots,  you can slice the data by dropping field to there area within the pivot table. Then filtering the data for details that you want will give the desired report. You can add totals, and customize the how different fields are calculated.

In Excel 2010, a new feature with the name of Power Pivot is provided that has to be installed separately. This comes loaded with a lot of new feature to the parent Pivot Tables (lately becomes part of it installation). As the MS website describes “you to import millions of rows of data from multiple data sources into a single Excel workbook, create relationships between heterogeneous data, create calculated columns and measures using formulas, build PivotTables and Pivot Charts, and then further analyze the data”

Presenting with Charts:

Business presentations are incomplete without Charts. They are the visual presentation of data that makes understanding and decision making easier. Excel has various types of charts that can be used to suit the requirement – but most commonly used are bar and line charts that every accountant must know how to do. These charts plot variables over the time (most of the time) or variables over some categories.

Anther type of chart that is useful for accountant is Pie chart that shows contribution of various factors to make a pie. This can be used to show various factors that contribute to a factor. You can also combine charts (not all but few) format them your taste. You can also export these charts to Power Point that will make your presentation more professional.

Analyzing with Analysis Tool Pack and What-If Analysis Feature:

This is a feature that comes when you install the analysis tool pack add in and is one of the most liked features by people who are into the data analysis field and are using Excel for it. Since accountants need to deal with data, they need to be good at statistics and how use and /or at least interpret the results form it.

Analysis tool pack equips Excel with various analysis tools, for most the “Regression Analysis” that is used to develop relation between two variables. It can be used for analyzing impact of one variable over other and can be use to predict values based on some input values. Similarly, one can have descriptive statistics for the data and can generate random numbers for use. It can create histogram for you as well.

Besides analysis tool pack, What-If analysis feature can help you create and analyze scenarios. It comes with Goal Seek, Data Tables and Scenario manager – each one directed helps you analyze the possible options and their impact on other variables.

Conclusion:

This is not the end of excel skills neither the end of excel skills the list that an accountant should learn. These are just few features of excel that help an accountant improve its efficiency, make analysis more real-time and make using excel fun. With every new edition of Excel, MS is adding new features to improve excel. The best approach will be to learn what is needed for you!

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How many days an employee has worked, and should get paid for, has always been a point of concern for an organization. The department responsible for implementing this validation is typically the Payroll department along with Human Resources and other Accounting personnel that prepare the monthly payroll file/report for the company.

This important task could be done manually, as has been the practice for decades, but now spreadsheets can provide a more accurate, less tedious, and faster solution to this problem. In today’s post we will learn how to setup and use the Networkdays and Networkdays.Intl formulas in Excel to automate this task with greater accuracy.

How to use the Networkdays and Networkdays.Intl Functions:

Before we start this tutorial, please download the companion workbook so that it is easier for you to follow the instructions.

Networkdays Sample

MS Excel (2010) has two functions that are mostly used for this task:

1. NETWORKDAYS()
2. NETWORKDAYS.INTL()

We will learn how to use this syntax and setup a sample sheet for our company.

1. NETWORKDAYS() – Networkdays simply counts the number of days between two dates excluding the weekends – i.e. Saturday and Sundays and a list of holidays or absences from that range. The syntax of the function is:

=NETWORKDAYS(start_date,end_date,[holidays])

Where:
• Start Date = A value entered as a date (date entered as text will return an error)
• End Date = Enter the date that marks the end of the target period
• Holidays = Enter any holidays taken by the employee – larges braces “[]” mark that this is an optional argument.

In order to demonstrate the setup we have created the following example.  See the following picture where Employee’s name, Start Date and End date will be entered.

For example for Mr. Pearson in the following table, the network days can be calculated using the formula:

=NETWORKDAYS(B3,C3,E3:I3)

The formula takes into account the data provided in the following table and returns the corresponding workday count.

The formula will automatically discount the weekends and we can vacations to the right (again this is optional) – the reason behind adding workdays before vacations is to give more space for vacations.

It is also to be noted that we can add either single cell or a range of cells to the third argument of the formula.

Why Use NETWORKDAYS.INTL() when we have already NETWORKDAYS() at our disposal?

=NETWORKDAYS.INTL(start_date,end_date,[weekend],[holidays])

And the following table of options can be used to set the weekend:

For example in Middle East Region the normal weekly day off falls on a Friday.  The number of days a person works between two dates without any holidays will be:

The formula we used here is:

=NETWORKDAYS.INTL(B3,C3,E3,)

The third option for the holidays is omitted as it is optional. If we have some vacations as well, we can add it to the table like we did in the previous table and the formula becomes:

=NETWORKDAYS.INTL(B3,C3,E3,F3:J3)

Other uses of NETWORKDAYS() and NETWORK.INTL() functions:

It is not only Human resources and Accounting that can use this function but it’s also helpful for the Project Management and Customs departments as well. For project management related tasks, it is commonly used to find the number of days that work could be scheduled for and how many days the project team will not be working (weekends, holidays, etc)

Similarly, for the Customs department, it is used to find the time that goods will take to reach the destination considering local and international conditions – weekend settings, holidays and the days when customs and import operations staff will be available.  Download the sample file to try it out yourself and please comment if you have other questions about the application or use of this formula.

Networkdays Sample

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If you don’t want your head to hurt by doing it that way, there’s a much easier way to add and subtract time in Excel.

Adding Time in Excel

Adding time is just as easy as adding any other number in Excel using the SUM function. Simply populate your list with the times formatted as hours:minutes like this 4:25 for four hours and 25 minutes.

Next, to add the time simply click the ∑ AutoSum button in the Editing Group on the Home tab while in the cell where you want the total to be. Make sure the correct cells are included in the AutoSum, and hit Enter. In the screenshot below, I wanted the total in cell B5, so I clicked that cell then clicked AutoSum. After checking that it correctly added cells B2:B4 I hit Enter, which gave me my total of 15 hours and 48 minutes.

Now, what happens if we are adding times that exceed 24 hours? We end up with a messy result if we don’t do a bit of formatting first.

In the same example as the screenshot above, if I make Job 1 take 14:25 instead of 4:25, the AutoSum changes to 1:48. Clearly that is not correct.

In order to get it to display the correct total (25:48), we need to format the total time. To do this, right click the total cell and select Format Cells.

In the Category box to the left, select “Custom”. Then in the Type box to the right, enter [h]:mm.

By using the left and right square brackets around the letter “h”, you are telling Excel that it can exceed 24 hours in the display.

The previous examples showed how to get the aggregate amount of time. But what if you wanted to add an amount of time to a given time of day?

Say we were trying to figure out what time of day it would be 8 hours after say 9 AM. With the TIME function, we can add any number of hours, minutes, and seconds to a given time to get the time it would be after that length of time.

In this case we would have 9AM in one cell and add TIME(8,0,0) to it. The numbers in the parenthesis are 8 for the number of hours we want to add, the first 0 for the number of minutes, and the last 0 for the number of seconds.

You can change the numbers in the TIME portion of the formula to get any number of hours, minutes, or seconds to add to another time this way.

Read on to learn about subtracting time in Excel.

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Count cells meeting certain criteria with Excel’s COUNTIF function

Let’s say we have a list of dates that cars were sold on a used car lot, the salesperson who sold the car, and the make of the car. This list is great information, but we want to know who sold the most cars. You can see the screenshot of this list to the left.

Using Excel’s COUNTIF function we can count cells meeting certain criteria to figure out who sold the most.

To make our lives easier, let’s put a list of the names of each member of the sales team either off to the side of this sales list or on another sheet. Joe, Bill, Max, and Sam. In my sheet I have this list in cells E2:E5.

In cell F1, I have the following formula:

=COUNTIF($B$2:$B$14,E2)

This formula takes the range B2:B14 where we have the names of the salespeople who sold the cars, and counts how many times they appear in that range. E2 contains a salesperson’s name, so it uses that cell as the criteria to match against. We could have just as easily typed in the salesperson’s name in place of E2 in the formula, but since we have several names to look up we can use the cell reference to avoid having to re-type the formula.

Next, copy the formula down to fill in next to the remaining salespeople to get the results. If you need to visualize this, check out the screenshot at the end of this article.

The results based on the list in the screenshot are Joe: 3, Bill : 4, Max: 3, Sam: 3.

This is great, but looking at the list it seems like Bill stopped selling as many cars after May. What gives Bill?

Count cells meeting multiple criteria with Excel’s COUNTIFS Function

What if we wanted to find out who sold the most cars in a certain time period? We can use Excel’s COUNTIFS function to count cells meeting multiple criteria.

I want to find out who sold the most cars each month, but the same concept we’re using could apply for any time period – weekly, quarterly, annually, or any other custom time period you would need to look up.

Continuing from the earlier example, let’s add columns for each month next to the total we set up in column F. So, column G would be January, H would be February, etc.

Now, since Excel refers to dates using a number rather than the normal month/day/year format we might be accustomed to we have to enter the range of dates we are interested in looking at. This may not be an ideal solution, but it does allow for custom date ranges.

Below our table of salespeople and months let’s add the first day of the month and the last day of the month so we can use those dates in our formula. In my sheet, I entered the first day of the month in row 7 of the month’s column, and the last day below it in row 8.

In cell G2, which on my spreadsheet is the cell that will display Joe’s sales tally for January, enter the following formula:

=COUNTIFS($A$2:$A$14,">="&G$7,$A$2:$A$14,"<="&G$8,$B$2:$B$14,$E2)

This formula is similar to the COUNTIF formula we used earlier, except COUNTIFS allows you to specify multiple criteria to fine tune the results.

You will also want to copy and paste this formula down to the other salespeople, and across to fill in for the other months.

We’ll break this formula down to each set of individual criterion.

$A$2:$A$14,”>=”&G$7

This looks at cells A2:A14 where our dates are and wants to find any that are greater or equal to cell G7, where I have the first day of the month listed.

Note that the date used in G7 is simply the start date of the time period we’re interested in. It doesn’t have to be the first day of a month, although in this example it is. It could be the first day of the quarter, week, or some other custom time period. Same idea applies to the last day of the month. Use whatever beginning and ending dates that make sense for your situation.

$A$2:$A$14,”<=”&G$8

This basically uses the same logic as the previous criterion, except it is looking for any dates that are less than or equal to the last day of the month, which are in cell G8.

$B$2:$B$14,$E2

Finally we use the same logic that we used in the previous COUNTIF formula to limit the results to only one salesperson. Cells B2:B14 contain the salesperson’s name who sold a car, while E2 contain the salesperson that we’re looking up.

Putting all that logic together in plain English, we’re asking COUNTIFS to count any cells where the date is greater than or equal to the first day of the month and less than or equal the last day of the month, and where the salesperson is the one at the beginning of the row.

If we wanted to also find out who sold the most of a certain make of car, we could add the condition $C$2:$C$14,”Honda”. This would show all the Hondas sold by a particular salesperson in a given month.

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However there was one expense that really did not correlate exactly to the number of students. This expense was shipping costs.

The supplier that provides the student manuals charges shipping costs based on a rate table where any orders whose total cost is between two amounts gets charged a certain rate.

The issue for me is that I wanted my budget to automatically update when I entered a new number of students. Looking at the table above, and assuming an $11 per student cost, I would be paying the $8 rate for shipping whether I had 1 ($11) or 2 ($22) students in the class. If I had 3 ($33), 4 ($44), or 5 ($55) students I’d be paying the $11.45 rate.

The VLOOKUP formula seemed like it would be the logical choice for this sort of problem, but the issue with VLOOKUP is that it doesn’t know how to define an upper or lower limit to the range.

To use the VLOOKUP price ranges formula, I needed to also use a couple other functions like SUMPRODUCT, and ROW.

My Excel Workbook is set up with tabs for each individual course, and another tab with the shipping cost table shown above.

• Shipping Worksheet B3:B35: Merchandise totals “From” column.
• Shipping Worksheet C3:C35: Merchandise totals “To” column.
• Shipping Worksheet A3:D35: VLOOKUP range.
• Class Budget Worksheet E6: Total cost of merchandise for that class.

With that information I got the following formula:

Here’s a breakdown of what is happening in this formula:

• VLOOKUP: This is using the range A3:D35 to look up the correct shipping cost. Column A was populated with sequential numbers to make the VLOOKUP easier. There are other ways to look this information up, I just chose this way for now.
• SUMPRODUCT(–(Shipping!B3:B35<=E6)*(Shipping!C3:C35>=E6)): This takes the ranges of B3: B35 and C3:C35 to find the set of high and low merchandise totals to find the pair that contain the value in cell E6.
• ROW(Shipping!B3:B35): This gives the row numbers 3 to 35. When combined with the SUMPRODUCT part of the formula, this will tell you the row number corresponding to the high and low totals that contain the value we are concerned with. Combining this with SUMPRODUCT provides the VLOOKUP with the look up value it needs.
• -2: There are two header rows so we need to subtract them from the result so the VLOOKUP will find the correct number in the table.

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To list out each character, type the following formula into a cell in row 1 (the column you are in doesn’t matter, just that you are in row 1).

=CHAR(ROW())

The CHAR formula will display the character that corresponds to a number between 1-255. ROW() will generate the current row number. Entering that formula in row 1 will produce the character that represents CHAR(1).

So now take that formula, copy and fill it down to row 255. This will give you all 255 characters in the font you are working with.

Most fonts will produce the same symbols within their own format. For example, row 162 will produce a cents symbol (¢) whether you’re using Arial, Times New Roman, etc. The symbol will just look slightly different the same way letters look different between the two fonts.

However, if you’re using a graphic font like Webdings, or Wingdings you will get something else entirely, like a box or a circle.

Once you have all these characters listed out, you can copy and paste them into other cells if you need to.

Another option to insert some of these special characters into your spreadsheet would be to click the Insert tab > Symbol from the Symbols group.

This brings up the Symbol window.

Here, you can find more than just the 255 characters that are associated with a particular font. You can quickly jump to a given subset of symbols such as Arrows, Currency Symbols, Greek, Mathematical Operators, etc. as well as switching between fonts.

You can also click on the Special Characters tab to get some additional characters such as the Copyright (©), Registered (®), or Trademark () symbols, among others.

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Let’s say you run a restaurant, and you want to see what menu items sell the best on any given day of the week. Looking at just one week’s worth of data doesn’t give you a good picture since you could have had a large party come in on a usually slow day, and throw off your statistics.

Instead, create a spreadsheet with a separate tab for each week you want to track, plus a total tab.

Next, click the Week 1 tab, hold down the Shift key and click the Total tab then release the Shift key. This selects all the tabs in your workbook, and allows you to type information into one sheet and have it show up in all the worksheets in your file.

On the Week 1 tab, click in cell A1 and enter Menu Item, then enter Monday through Sunday in cells B1 through H1. In cells A2 through A7, enter some menu items. I’m using Fish, Steak, Pork, Pasta, Alcohol, and Total. You can enter whatever you want here and go down as far as you need to.

If you want to apply any formatting to all the cells or add total formulas, go ahead and do that now while all the worksheets are still selected.

Using Excel 3D Sum Formula

Now that all the consistent formatting has been done, click on any of the other worksheets in your workbook in order to deselect all the others.

Enter in some sales data for each of the weeks.

Now that all the weeks are populated, you can start using the 3D sum formula in order to get the Total tab populated.

To do this, click on the Total tab, and select cell B2. Enter the following equation:

=SUM(Week1:Week6!B2)

This formula now adds up everything in cell B2 between Week 1 and Week 6. You can copy and paste that formula into the remaining cells to get the totals for all the other menu items and days.

More Than Just 3D Sum Formula?

Let’s say you wanted to something else with the data in this workbook. Maybe you didn’t want to add the data to get a total, but maybe you wanted to get an average, or find the minimum (or maximum) amount for each menu item on a given day.

You can use any of the following functions in a 3D formula:

• SUM
• AVERAGE
• AVERAGEA
• COUNT
• COUNTA
• MAX
• MAXA
• MIN
• MINA
• PRODUCT
• STDEV
• STDEVA
• STDEVP
• STDEVPA
• VAR
• VARA
• VARP
• VARPA

To use any of these functions in a 3D formula, click the cell you want to enter it in, and type

=[Name of Function](

Click the tab of the first worksheet in your reference (in the previous example, Week 1).

Hold down the Shift key, and click the last worksheet in the reference (in the previous example, Week 6).

Click the cell or range of cells to be referenced. Complete the formula with any additional arguments that are required, and then press Enter.

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The formula uses the equation, which basically adds up a range of cells based on a certain set (or sets) of criteria. In this case we will use two dates as the start and end point to tell the formula to add up any values that are found in between those dates.

Add Values Between Two Dates

In the image above, there are dates in column A, and a list of number we want to add in column B.

You can see that there is also a little table in columns D:F that show the end result. Here’s how you can get there.

In cell E2 (the January total), you would enter in the following formula:

=SUMIFS($B$1:$B$12,$A$1:$A$12,">="&E$4,$A$1:$A$12,"<="&E$5)

You can then drag that formula over to cell F2 (or however far across you need it to go) to get totals for other months.

Step-by-step, here is what that formula is doing:

• $B$1:$B$12 – Defines the range of cells to be added if they meet the criteria to be defined later in the equation.
• $A$1:$A$12 – Defines the range of cells that the first criteria should apply to. In this case it is the range of dates.
• “>=”&E$4 – Defines the “start date”, which in the example above is entered into cell E4. However, if you wanted to enter the start date directly into the formula, you could replace “>=”&E$4 with “>=1/1/2014”, or whatever your start date is.
• $A$1:$A$12 – Defines the range of cells that the second criteria should apply to. In this case it is the same range that the first criteria should apply to. You could define a different range if you needed to.
• “<=”&E$5 – Defines the “end date”, which in the example above is entered into cell E5. Just like the start date, you could enter “<=1/31/2014” directly into the equation if you wanted to.

A couple things to point out about this equation:

• The range of dates do not need to be in any particular order. Notice in the example how the January dates are all sequential, but the February dates are out of order. The formula would have produced the same results if the list was sorted by column B, or if it was in no particular order whatsoever.
• The will not work in a Excel 97-2003 workbook. Instead, you can use the equation to achieve the same results.
  • =SUMPRODUCT(($A$1:$A$12>=E$4)*($A$1:$A$12<=E$5),$B$1:$B$12)
• Notice the count row under the total row? This is achieved by using the formula, which is very similar to , except that it counts the number of cells that meet certain criteria rather than sum up a range of corresponding cells. This could be a useful addition to the spreadsheet if, for example, you wanted to get an average sale amount.
  • =COUNTIFS($A$1:$A$12,">="&E$4,$A$1:$A$12,"<="&E$5) – This basically looks at the dates in A1:A12 and counts them if they fall in the range of dates given in E4 and E5.
• You can easily change the dates that get added by changing the values in E4 and E5 (and F4:F5). This will let you  add up all the amounts on the same day, during a week, month, year, or whatever time period you choose. 

What applications would you use this sort of formula for?

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Recently I needed to help a company set up email accounts for all of their employees on a new server. I was given the email address usernames but needed to create the passwords for each account. I didn’t want to be lazy and assign everyone the same password, or even an easily guessed sequential password, so I used the tip below to generate random character strings in Excel to give each user a unique and random password.

How to Generate Random Character String in Excel

In order to generate random character strings in Excel, you need to be able to generate random numbers, upper and lowercase letters, and special symbols. Excel has this functionality built in to help generate random character strings.

Generate Random Number String

To generate a random number string in Excel, simply use a formula like this:

=RANDBETWEEN(0,9)

This will randomly display a number between 0 and 9 each time the page is refreshed.

Generate Random Uppercase Letter String

=CHAR(RANDBETWEEN(65,90))

This will randomly display a letter between A-Z.

Generate Random Lowercase Letter String

=CHAR(RANDBETWEEN(97,122))

This will randomly display a letter between a-z.

Generate Random Symbol String

=CHAR(RANDBETWEEN(33,47))

This will randomly generate one of the following symbols: !”#$%&'()*+,-./

*Note: the CHAR() formula in Excel will generate a lot of other symbols as well. However, if the purpose is to create a password that someone may have to type on their keyboard, you want to keep it simple and avoid symbols like ¶, Œ, or ©. While these symbols can be typed with a special combination of keystrokes, it isn’t likely that someone will want to remember how to type each of these characters.

Generate a Random Password

Good passwords tend to have at least eight characters and are a mix of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. To do this, simply combine the above formulas into one formula by simply adding an ampersand (&) in between each formula, like this:
=RANDBETWEEN(0,9)&CHAR(RANDBETWEEN(65,90))&CHAR(RANDBETWEEN(97,122))&CHAR(RANDBETWEEN(33,47))&RANDBETWEEN(0,9)&CHAR(RANDBETWEEN(65,90))&CHAR(RANDBETWEEN(97,122))&CHAR(RANDBETWEEN(33,47))[/restrict]
This would create something like 6Ib&4Rj/ or 8Bs%3Xa+

You can have any combination of letters, numbers or symbols that you want by moving the formulas around. There’s also nothing saying you couldn’t have a longer password string by chaining on even more randomness to the formula.

A word of caution! If you are using this to generate a list of passwords, for example, be aware that the list will automatically change every time you refresh your worksheet, or change the value of a cell, etc. To ensure you don’t lose these values once they’re created, select the list of random passwords, copy and paste them as values. This will prevent them from updating again.

Another thing to consider is that if you need to make sure that all values are unique, this method isn’t foolproof. While it may not be likely that you will get the same string more than once, it certainly is possible. One easy way to check for duplicates is to use Conditional Formatting on the list of cells. First, select all the cells where you will generate random character strings. Then on the Home tab, Styles group select Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicate Values. In the first drop-down make sure “Duplicate” is selected, then choose a format in the drop-down. Click OK.

As your passwords are generated it will check for duplicates and highlight any that show up. I used this method on a quick test by copying the formula above down the entire column A (over 1 million random strings), and there were duplicates.

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First, some background on what it does.  Goal Seek is essentially the answer to every middle school aged kid’s math test word problem.  It is best used when you know the answer to the problem you’re trying to solve, but don’t know all the inputs.

For example, a simple word problem might be “You have 432 sheets of paper to give out to a class of 36 students.  How many sheets of paper does each student get.”  Well you know that 36 multiplied by something will give you 432, but you don’t know what that number is.  You could divide 432 by 36 to get the answer, but let’s assume that isn’t possible right now.  With Goal Seek, you need several things:

• An answer expressed as a formula, in this case 432 is equal to 36 times something.  Don’t worry, the result of the formula doesn’t have to equal 432 yet.  That’s the magic of Goal Seek.
• You need one part of the equation, in this case 36.

To start, type the following into your spreadsheet in the cells indicated.

Next, open Goal Seek (Tools | Goal Seek, or Data tab on the Excel 2007 ribbon | What If Analysis | Goal Seek).

You are now going to be asked for three things. 

1. Set Cell: this is the reference to the cell that contains your formula, in which you want Excel to produce your answer of 432.  In our example it should be A3.  Note: the Set Cell MUST contain a formula or function.
2. To Value: this is the value you want in your Set Cell (A3).  The value here should be 432.
3. By Changing Cell: Since we know that the formula in cell A3 is correct, and the value of 36 in cell A1 is correct, we want Excel to produce the answer of 432 by changing cell A2.  Type A2 in this box.  Note: the Changing Cell MUST contain a value.
4. Click OK.

After clicking OK, Excel will attempt to find a solution to the equation.  Once it does, it will enter the missing number in cell A2 and your formula should now equal 432.

Obviously this is a basic example, and doesn’t use Goal Seek’s capabilities to their fullest extent.  Let’s take another example that looks at a company’s sales by product to get their desired level of revenue.

XYZ Company makes four different products, Product A, Product B, Product C, and Product D.  The company can produce 1,000, 750, 500, and 100 of each product respectively.  The products also sell for $15, $20, $35, and $50 respectively.  Their maximum revenue for products produced that month, therefore is as follows:

Now say the company feels that their underdog, Product D, could be producing much more.  They also want their revenues to be 60,000.  How many more of Product D will they need to produce?

To figure this out, run Goal Seek just like before, except this time, the “Set Cell” is cell D6, “To Value” is 60,000, and the “By Changing Cell” is cell B5.  After clicking OK, you’ll notice that Excel has changed the value in cell B5 to 250, indicating that you will need to increase production of Product D to 250 units from 100 in order to have revenues of $60,000, assuming everything else remains the same.

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