7 Reasons Why We Love Excel

With everything being about new age technology and the next best thing, it’s important to remember we don’t always need to reinvent the wheel. 

Some of the best technologies have been around for years, such as Microsoft Excel. Excel is used by an estimated 750 million people worldwide. And whilst it is sometimes regarded as “basic”, it is still considered Microsoft’s most important consumer product. 

As the most widely used software for spreadsheets, proficiency in Excel is now a necessity and not just a bonus. 

Here is why we love Excel. 

You can use it 

Being able to get the answers you need quickly without having to wait for the IT Department or some computer wizz to help, is just one reason why we love Excel. 

Instead of waiting weeks or months to understand the software, by using Excel-based software, like Velixo, you can get the data you need, clean it up, reorganize it, format it, and filter it, in just 5 minutes. You’re in control and there is zero learning curve. 

Big systems deliver clean data and Excel helps you do something with it. 

Excel is widely used in finance and accounting because it’s easy to use and has an unmatched depth of financial functions. On the front end—reports and dashboard summaries; on the back end—data stored and retrieved for calculations.

Clean data is a prerequisite for summarizing and analyzing your data, for identifying patterns and asking questions. Big systems generally deliver the clean data, and with Excel you can quickly analyze it, assessing vital aspects of your business issues.

In short: Excel helps you draw actionable conclusions from data — and that alone is a major reason to master the tool. For those who need a helping hand, check out Udemy’s Microsoft Excel Online Training Course. 

You can upgrade your solution 

Want to make your Excel program even better? 

By adding clever solutions such as Velixo, you can combine the power of Excel with your Acumatica or MYOB Advanced ERP system to solve all reporting problems. By combining a pre-existing asset with some added features, such as those which Velixo Reports adds to your program and – voila as the French say. Now you have leveraged your previously used software, added some new tricks, and have the ability with Velixo to make better business decisions. 

Single source of truth for your data

This is typically one of the reasons why people try to move away from spreadsheets – they have data left and right, in multiple systems, spreadsheets, servers – multiple silos of information. It’s unstructured, there’s a lot of redundancy, outdated data, errors, etc. 

By having an ERP system, this lets you solve that problem, and Velixo helps you towards a single source of truth by keeping all the important data in the ERP and showing you up-to-date information in a single click, without the need to do any exports, data entry or other manual operation to update. 

It’s great for collaboration 

Excel is everywhere. Native apps are available on most platforms, including mobile devices – you can even view spreadsheets in your browser! 

With the latest versions of Excel, it’s also possible to collaboratively edit a spreadsheet, and this is called co-authoring. The beauty of this is that you can see changes instantly, so it has made collaborating to create reports possible. 

You Can Do Anything With a Spreadsheet

Hands up who loves to write lists?? 

Well thankfully, Excel is designed to help with all different types of business tasks, as the application has almost no limits. Here are some examples:

• Project planning 
• Create revenue growth models for new products based on new customer forecasts.
• Automate Jobs with VBA Macros. 
• Marketing and editorial content planning 
• PNL Sheets 
• Data Entry and Lists. 
• Create a Dashboard and Reports. 
• Budgeting 
• Calculate and analyze customer discounts, purchases, inventory, income, expenses… you name it!

Use pivot tables to analyze data 

A pivot table is a summary of your data, packaged in a chart that lets you report on and explore trends based on your information. Pivot tables are particularly useful if you have long rows or columns that hold values you need to track the sums of and easily compare to one another. 

Check our recent blog with tips and tricks for using Pivot tables to analyze data. Pivot tables provide flexibility for reporting. 

Click here to see some other reasons why we LOVE EXCEL.