Excel is one of the best programs you can find on Microsoft. Entrepreneurs are among the people who benefit most from using Microsoft Excel. But, making the most of it requires an excellent basic understanding of how it works and what it can help you achieve.
If you are a beginner entrepreneur, you should learn Excel when starting. It will help ensure you’re ready to handle data when your business grows. So, what should you know about basic Excel? This article will explore everything you need to know about this program.
Let’s get into it.
Table of Contents
What is Excel?
The first step should be to understand what Microsoft Excel is and what it does. Well, Excel is a program that comes with the Microsoft Office suite. It helps entrepreneurs or anyone who deals with data, with various tasks. This includes gathering, organizing, and storing it in spreadsheets.
If you are a complete novice, you might be wondering what we mean by a spreadsheet. It is a worksheet that has rows and columns. You can enter all the data you want to store in the rows and columns. Then, you can save the Excel spreadsheet and access it later when you need it.
There are different data types that you can store in spreadsheets. They include inventories, expenses, debts, and income. Besides storing such data, you can work around it within the spreadsheet. But this requires you to know a few basic and advanced Excel formulas.
You can enroll in an Excel course and learn the various Excel formulas. By the end of the course, you’ll know how to calculate the percent difference in Excel and do many other calculations. This will enable you to organize your data and prepare accurate Excel reports.
Benefits of Excel for Entrepreneurs
There are various benefits that entrepreneurs can get from using Microsoft Excel. Entrepreneurs must invest in modern solutions to simplify their work. This section will look at the various benefits you can get from Excel as an entrepreneur looking to grow your business.
They include:
- Finance and Accounting
One of the most critical tasks in business is keeping track of transactions. It can take time to follow manual processes as an accountant. Besides, there’s a high risk of making mistakes. The best way to avoid making costly errors is to learn about Excel and start using it for bookkeeping.
- Human Resources
Managing your workforce can also be a daunting task. But you can simplify it by using software like Microsoft Excel. It can help you organize and store essential employee data. In addition, you can use it for payroll management. Also, it can help with work scheduling and monitoring.
- Product Management and Marketing
Inventory management is another task that Excel can help simplify. You can know the products available in your store and those that need replenishing. Also, you can use Excel to identify the fast-moving products. This will help you plan for the future and also make critical decisions.
Those are examples of how Excel can benefit you. There are many other ways that you can use it as an entrepreneur. But accounting, HR, and inventory management are the most challenging tasks for entrepreneurs. You can now simplify them by leveraging the power of Microsoft Excel.
What Can You Do With Excel?
It’ll be vital to mention some of the things you can do with Excel. This will give you a better view of why Excel is worth adopting for your business. Well, here are some instances where Excel can prove helpful to an entrepreneur:
- Understand the best ways to build profitable customer relationships. This is by knowing the products that generate the highest revenue and investing in them to ensure better experiences.
- Determine the kind of discounts to give customers. This is possible by reviewing monthly purchase volumes. You can use data to decide the specific customers to reward.
- Understand current revenue growth and predict future growth. This will help you make the right decisions to increase profits and expand your business.
These examples show what Excel can help you achieve. You can also develop other ways of using Excel as an entrepreneur. You’ll learn more about solving problems using Excel as you take an Excel course. Besides, you’ll learn more as you continue using the software.
Excel Tricks Every Entrepreneur Should Know
Microsoft Excel isn’t an easy program and software to work with as a beginner. Only a few people manage to understand how it works fully. If you learn and master all its formulas, you’ll be among the few Excel experts. But here are some basic Excel tricks that entrepreneurs need.
- Basic math functions – We have already mentioned that there are basic formulas you should learn. This is the foundation of learning and making the most of Excel. You can also learn more advanced formulas as you use them. It would help if you started with basics like how to find totals and such.
- Pivot tables – It’ll also help understand how pivot tables work in Excel. They are the best to use when you want to work with numbers by category. All you need to do is learn how to create a pivot table. But, most of the work with pivot tables is drag and drop; it won’t trouble you.
- SUMIF – It is an excellent option to use when you have smaller data sets. Pivot tables are ideal for working with large data sets. Thus, it would be best if you also considered learning how SUMIF works. It’ll help you work with small data sets and get the desired results.
Conclusion
There’s no doubt that Microsoft Excel is an excellent tool for an entrepreneur. Handling daily transactions and customer data might seem easy when you’re starting. But the work volume will increase gradually as your business grows. With time, it’ll be tricky to gather and store data.
This is why you need to learn the basics of Microsoft Excel. It will help you automate tasks and reduce the time and resources spent handling data. Now you have a good background in Microsoft Excel. You can now start practicing things like calculating percent differences in Excel.
