SPREADSHEETS

Spreadsheet software programs, help us, the future accountants in our job very much. The first thing that we should learn to do is how to :

Create a spreadsheet

Accountants use spreadsheet software for budgets and other kinds of financial planning and record keeping. You can use one to help with your own financial planning and for other purposes. The terrific thing about electronic spreadsheets is that the mathematical work is all done by the computer.

When you open a new spreadsheet document, you'll see a worksheet and menus and toolbars similar to those on a word-processing document. Some of the icons, however, are found only on spreadsheet programs. Data is entered into small cells that make up rows and columns on the worksheet. A cell carries one piece of information. A column contains a category of data-for example, persons' names. A row contains a complete record for one person or thing. For example, a row might contain one person's name, address, job title, weekly salary, and other data.

You can also convert spreadsheet data into various kinds of graphs. (Spreadsheet software programs usually refer to graphs as charts.)

This shows a simple example of a spreadsheet. After the data were typed in, the computer did the total (or sum) of the costs. With a spreadsheet, you can do even difficult calculations quickly and easily.