With an estimated 750 million users worldwide, Microsoft Excel is no doubt the most widely used application for data storage, analyzing, and presentation. Using the right formulas with the right combination, Microsoft Excel can produce a wide range of output, such as dashboard reports using Pivot Table and Slicer functions, complex business modeling, automated planning and budgeting, and many more.
Furthermore, Microsoft Excel is an indispensable tool for an Accountant to perform a variety of tasks, especially in reporting. Many Financial and Accounting software in the market offers an interface that is compatible with Microsoft Excel to import data and entries to and from the system via Microsoft Excel, generating reports, etc.
According to Bill Jelen and Tracy Syrstad (2018), “Microsoft believes that the ordinary Office customer touches only 10% of the features in Office.” Microsoft Excel custom add-in and Macros with Visual Basic Application (VBA) offers great potential in automating manual tasks and reports. While some companies actively invest in these features to improve the efficiency of their Finance processes and reporting capabilities, many are not aware of it’s potential.
Compiling data from multiple worksheets into one worksheet, automatically matches data from two different sources, and exporting data from Microsoft Excel Files into Powerpoint of PDF reporting packs are some of the examples of common manual tasks that can be automated using these functions.