Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About
Application Software:
Microsoft Excel

A spread sheet is a piece of paper with rows and columns for recording financial data for use in comparative analysis. In computer science, it is an accounting or bookkeeping program that displays data in rows and columns on a screen.  (Bartleby.com)  

Even though simple accounting procedures can be done using spreadsheets, there are specific accounting packages which include different modules, such as accounts receivable or accounts payable. Microsoft Money and Intuit Quicken are two accounting packages designed for home use.

The main spreadsheet programs are Microsoft Excel, Lotus 1-2-3, and Quattro Pro.  These are several screen shots that will assist you in creating a spreadsheet using Microsoft Excel.  Some of the screens are actual links ... click on them to see a full screen, which will make it easier to read!  It will open up in a new window, so when you want to return to this page, just "X" out or close that browser window.

To open Microsoft Excel, click on "Start" ~ "Programs" ~ "Microsoft Excel." 

This is the first screen that you will see.  You should have some idea of what columns and rows you will need to report all the information you want.  However, you can easily change the order of columns or rows using the cut and paste function common to all Microsoft products.

A cell (or an area in which data is keyed) is identified by the column and the row.  For instance, the first square in the top left hand corner is labeled "A1," which is column A, row 1.  Note that the toolbar across the top of the screen is very similar to other Microsoft products, particularly in the Microsoft Office package.  Therefore, centering information, selecting font styles and sizes, bolding, italicizing, and underlining is done in the same way as in Word.

In cell A1, we entered "The ABC Company" and in cell A2, we entered "Year End Profit/Loss."  In cells, B3 through E3, we entered the 1st quarter, 2nd Quarter, 3rd Quarter, and 4th Quarter.  In cell F3, we entered "Year to Date."  In cells A4 through A11, we entered sales income, miscellaneous income, total income, payroll, product cost, shipping, miscellaneous costs, total costs, and in cell A12 we entered profit/loss.  To complete the rest of the spreadsheet formatting, we did:

• In Cells A1 and B1, selected Bradley Hand ITC font and selected 20 for the font size.  Bold each cell.

• Selected "plum" for the font color and "gray-25%" for the fill in the background (located to the left of the font color icon) for both cells.

• With cursor in cell A1, we dragged the cursor to the right side of cell F1.  With this range highlighted, we clicked the merge and center button, which is to the right of the left, center, right justifying icons.  Repeat for cell B1.

• Highlight cells B3 through F3, Arial, size 12, bold.

• Highlight cells A4 through A12, bold (Ariel, size 10).

• On the gray alphabetical bar on the top of the work sheet, place the cursor between block "A" and block "B."  The cursor changes to crosshairs.  Enlarge column A to 20.43 (or 148 pixels) by clicking and dragging cursor to the left.

• Increase columns B through F to 15.00 (or 110 pixels).

• Highlight B3 to F3, and click on the borders icon to the very right of the fill color icon (two from the font color icon).  Select row 2 column 2, thick bottom border.

• We keyed in the following data, but it really doesn't matter what you key in as long as there is data in the proper fields.

Your worksheet should now look like this:

Click on image to enlarge

• Highlight cells B5 through E5.  Click the borders icon and add a bottom border (row 1, column 2).

• Highlight cells B6 through E6.  Click on the "Auto Sum" button which looks like the Greek letter, sigma () on the tool bar above the comma (,).  As you enter, you will see that the total income for all 4 quarters is now shown.

• Highlight the cells B10 through E10 and insert a bottom border (row 1, column 2).

• Follow the same procedure as above for totaling cells B11 through E11.  Highlight, Auto Sum (), enter.

• Place cursor in cell B12.  Type the equal sign (=).  Point and click B6.  Type the dash, or minus sign (-).  Point and click B11.  Enter.  Now you have the difference between total income and total costs, or the profit-loss for the quarter.

• Click onto cell B12, control C.  Highlight C12 through E12, control V.  The same formula that was entered originally into B12 is now copied to row 12 of columns C, D, and E.  (Excel automatically updates the formula with the proper cells.)

• Highlight columns F4 through F12, and use the "Auto Sum" () button to enter Year to Date totals.

• Highlight cells B3 through F5.  Right click, format cells.  (Or use the Format on the top toolbar.)  On the Number tab, click "number" and be sure that the 1000 separator (comma) is checked and the decimal point is set at 2.  Select the negative number format of your choice.  We chose the third one from the top, using brackets and in black rather than red.  Click OK.

• Use the same formatting steps as above to format cells B7 to F10.

• Highlight B6 through F6.  Right click, format cells.  On the number tab, select "accounting."  The decimal place should be set at 2.  Click OK.

• Follow the same for B11 to F12 to format those cells.

• In the same way as we lengthen the width of the columns, with the cursor as crosshairs, we increased the height of row 7 by placing the cursor between the 7 bar and the 8 bar to increase the height to 21.00 (or 28 pixels).  We increased row 12 to 30.00 (or 40 pixels) in the same way.  (This gives the spreadsheet more ease in reading.)

• We also increased the font in row 12 to size 12.  Highlighting A12 through F12, we filled with "gray-25%" and changed the font color "plum."  We also made this range bold for ease in reading.

Click on image to enlarge

Before you print, you want to go to File, Page Setup, and change the orientation from portrait to landscape in order to get the entire spreadsheet on one 8-1/2 by 11 sheet of paper.

To create a simple graph, highlight cells B3 through E3.  Holding down the control key, highlight cells B12 through E12.  Click onto the chart wizard - 3 icons to the right of the sigma icon ().

• We selected the pie graph and clicked next.

• After confirming that there was a check in "rows,", we clicked on "next."

• On the title tab, we inserted the title of "Year End Profit Loss."

• On the legend tab, we chose the legend to display on the right hand side.

• On the data labels tab, we chose "category," "percentage," and made sure that "show leader lines" was checked.

• We chose the graph to be an object in the spreadsheet rather than creating a new sheet for the graph.  (This would of course depend upon how much information is contained on the spreadsheet.)

• Click finish.