Don’t fear the spreadsheet

Do not fear the spreadsheet

The spreadsheet is still a very useful tool

Clearly, we have come to the point where your accounting and bookkeeping are automated with tools such as Quickbooks (for Windows and Mac) and GNUCash (for Linux/BSD) as well as others.

And for as useful as they are, they are also limited.

What they do well

Well, they are very good at accounting and bookkeeping. They create some great reports and more, but they are limited as a tool for projections and “What-If” scenerios.

What-If?

It would be almost impossible to use a bookkeeping or accounting software package to do future projections or what-if and maybe even start up calculations.

If anyone knows how to do this, please enlighten us in the comments.

These tools are not meant to compute “possibilities” they are meant for facts, realities of now and to tell you what has happened. Not the future.

The good old spreadsheet

While you can surely use a spreadsheet to do what the aforementioned software does, it is far easier to use the software.

The benefit of the spreadsheet is that you can play with the numbers. For example, you can create a profit and loss sheet and then add 13.26% increase to your income or expenses to see how that would translate into your bottom line as a dollar amount.

You can compute how taxes will affect you, break-even analysis and a lot more.

You can find all the info you need in Google or your favorite search engine and you can also take some basic spreadsheet classes from SoBeCoWorks, just let us know and we’ll get in contact with you.

So, do you have any comments? Let us know in the comments.

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