A spreadsheet is an excellent tool for small business bookkeeping, but it doesn’t come without its own set of challenges. It takes time to learn how to use them properly, and you should prepare to spend a lot of your time refining your spreadsheet’s formatting. This article will give you some tips for getting the most out of your spreadsheets.
o Make sure you know your spreadsheets well. The larger the number of pages in your spreadsheet, the more work you have to do to make sure the formatting is correct. Make sure you know what columns are where and that they’re set up correctly for you. If you’ve read books about the subject, you should be familiar with the basics, but you’ll probably need to go over this a few times before you’re comfortable.
o Make sure you’ve labeled all of your information. I use the Excel Ribbon for this purpose, but there are others out there as well. Label each column and row of information for easy reading, so you can quickly refer to what’s relevant when you need to. Labeling is also handy if you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to “un-lab” something, i.e.
o Labeling is also useful if you need to access important data later on. In this case, you can just label the column/row that you want to look at and then drag and drop it into the appropriate area.
o Make sure the margins are not too wide. You’ll want to ensure that you can see your data from top to bottom, without being distorted by spaces or columns that overlap.
o The largest concern is making sure that your spreadsheets are properly aligned with one another. The alignment feature is in place to help make sure that you don’t accidentally input things at the wrong place, but you should also make sure that all of your columns and rows are lined up correctly.
o Finally, make sure that all of your calculations are all properly formatted. For instance, you want to make sure that you’re entering your income correctly, so you must look over all of your columns and rows.
These tips should help you get the most out of your spreadsheets for small business bookkeeping. Just keep these things in mind and you should be able to make great use of them!
