Uses of Excel in Daily Life
Developed by Microsoft, Excel is a powerful spreadsheet program that enables users to input and analyze data. People can keep track of their information, whether personal or business, by storing and manipulating data to achieve different objectives. While the Excel spreadsheets look pretty simplistic, they can perform complicated functions which allows them to be used in different expertise levels. For instance, Accountants can use Excel programs to perform sophisticated activities such as forecasting and business analysis (O’Flaherty & Phillips, 2015). The program’s simplicity also makes it useful for people that require it for less complicated purposes such as storing personal budgets and travel data. This paper discusses different uses of excel in everyday life with a key focus on how the program can be used at home, work, and school.
At home, the Excel spreadsheet program is used in many ways. While many people may not see the importance of using programs to store their data, it is critical to keep track of expenses, budgets, and savings. Excel can play a crucial role in making this possible. Tracking of personal savings can be a tiresome task for many people. With Excel spreadsheets, however, the jobs become simple. One can create rows and columns, perhaps indicating the dates, and amounts banked. Since Excel can auto sum the values, every time a new saving is made the total can be viewed. An additional column of the targeted savings, perhaps at the end of the year, can be made. Every time a new figure is input, the deviation between what is expected and what is achieved can be identified.
Excel can also be used at home to track personal expenses by comparing them with the budgets. A budget can be created the start of every month. Once expenditures are made, the figures are updated alongside the expected budgets to track any over or under spending. The program can also be used to monitor project progress and managing their expenses. For instance, one can record the expected total costs for a building project and scheduled completion date in an Excel sheet. After every month, the actual expenditure can be compared with the budget and any corrective action taken.
At work, Excel can be used to analyze vast volumes of data to create summaries, charts, and presentations in different business scenarios (O’Flaherty & Phillips, 2015). For instance, the program can be used to analyze monthly sales targets and comparing it with actual daily targets to appraise performance. Additionally, its powerful functions can be used to look up and match data hence saving on time. Excel also creates handy charts that indicate monthly and yearly movements of a different set of data, such as data sales and expenditure. With such visualizations, presentation of data becomes very easy and also avoids bombarding the management with unnecessary raw data. Decision making is therefore made more straightforward.
The Excel spreadsheet functions can also be used at school by both teachers and students to achieve different objectives. For instance, teachers can use the program to record student attendance, marks scored in tests and planned classes. Additionally, Excel spreadsheets can also be used in time management by recording expected class intervals to ensure that classes do not conflict. Students can also use Excel to track their scores and school progress. All these uses prove that Excel is not only useful to Accountants and analysts, but it can also be used across the board by different people in their daily lives to achieve different objectives.
Reference
O’Flaherty, J., & Phillips, C. (2015). The use of flipped classrooms in higher education: A scoping review. The internet and higher education, 25, 85-95.