[Closed] Value of Excel in a Chartered accounts practise

usually in management account report writing.

Most accounting packages can be a bit luddite with report outputs so often its preferable to extract the data and then manipulate it externally in Excel and produce custom tabular/graphical outputs.

Its also useful to extract any accounting data for any kind of performance analysis - such as supplier analysis, credit control, work in progress etc etc.

People like to do things their own way and most packages cant accommodate that,

As stoner says, I would suggest you understand vlookup inside ouut. And I found the trim function a godsend. Depending on where the data comes from different packages have querks.

Thanks Stoner, looks like I'll have plenty to do then! Can't wait. I've been out of work for 18 months so this could be a great opportunity.

I've read John Walkenback's 'Excel Formulas' cover to cover amongst others, mainly VBA, so I should be fine there mrmo.

If your clients bring data to you in Excel, you need to work with Excel.

Know excel inside out and you can do any accounting job. Accounts is just Debits and Credits. The skill is interpreting them and reporting them, which you do using excel.

You must be able to do maths using it, sum stuff, make tables, link cells in seperate worksheets, do pivot tables, filters, averages, sub totals etc Not advanced but not basic. You can learn it all on google, dont bother buying a book.

as mrmo says, master data manipulation functions - cleaning, ordering trimming, splitting, chopping, formatting, etc. Most packages manage to output data in such a mess you have to spend a bit of time getting it into clean useable data first before you even get down to the maths,

the only time I made much use of vba is when formula got so complicatedd it was easier to error check

I've grown up on spreadsheets, first job was report writing with Visicalc, got published in Micro Decision for the inventive stuff we did. Moved on to be a DBA then S/W developer but I still love messing about with SS's even after all these years.

Sage has an 'implant' into Excel, maybe get a demo copy of Sage onto your own PC and play.

Plus vlookup, pivot-tables and reporting.

I'm a qualified accountant responisble for the planning and analysis function of a group of companies.

Excel is my working life.

With good excel skills you should be hoping to create financial models that are easy to use and understand for your colleagues in the practice.

Be warned though, as a breed, accountants like to be able to see the workings, so never write overcomplicated formulas. Allow the user to be able to see the logical steps that you've taken in your analyis.
Once people are convinced of your skills make more complicated models that, if you know how, utilise VBA.

As Stoner has mentioned excel is most commonly used in the management accounts reporting side. Which is by far and away the most interesting side.

Looking at these replies I wish I'd got onto AAT or suchlike 18months ago. At that time I couldn't make my mind up between this sort of role or being a web developer. Took the wrong path I think. At nearly 51 is it too late to get qualified?

Not at all, but it does take a few years.

Depending on your level of excel skills there is a book I have (unfortunately I'm not in the office today) called something like 'Financial Modelling in Excel - Current thinking', that provides a really good, logical, approach to excel modelling. It runs through some key concepts that will help to standardise your apporach to excel and make your models more transferable to other users.

I'll try and remember to post its proper title, author etc on Monday.

my mum qualified as AAT when she was 50 and then went on to do her full on accounting stuff and has been doing auditing for a while. Now shes an interim FD.

As it happens yesterday I ordered:
"Mastering Financial Modelling in Microsoft Excel: A Practitioner's Guide to Applied Corporate Finance (Financial Times Series)"
Alastair Day

and

"Mastering Financial Management: A Step-by-Step Guide to Corporate Financial Management (Financial Times Series)"
Mr Clive Marsh.

I'm in corporate finance - investing. Most of the financial modelling I encounter from accountants is done with Excel. I imagine that account prep and general reporting will continue to be done on Sage, or a comparable package, but Excel will be around and v. much a part of accountancy practices for some time to come.

excel is used here for all 'offline' working and as the translation from the financial systems data to wordy management advice

As above, any package that has ever been implemented here always ends up being used as an extraction tool and to possibly carry out the first layer of simple data maniplation. All other stuff is done in excel, its such a flexible tool.

In my experience most accountants only use about 1% of the functionality they could in excel (lets face it accounts is just adding up and taking away - so thats mostly what they do). Some aren't even very good at presenting the data!

Sage is the defacto standard - but as others have suggested is painful to try and manipulate data in, and in some ways worse to present data "attractively". As someone else said there is a little sage plugin that links Sage to Excel (It uses a database query but its dumbed down for the typical user!).

You may not need to be a AAT qualified to find work. If you can impress them as an excel guru and show them how they can save time / be more responsive to clients you might be able to get work just as an Excel consultant - most Accountants see it as a tool not something they revel in using...

You may not need to be a AAT qualified to find work. If you can impress them as an excel guru and show them how they can save time / be more responsive to clients you might be able to get work just as an Excel consultant - most Accountants see it as a tool not something they revel in using...

Thanks poly, that's exactly what I'm hoping will happen.

if you want to be an accountant, you will need to be able to use excel, if you want to be a financial systems geek then show them everything you can do - but expect to end up a helpdesk monkey for the aging and IT incompetant......

INDIRECT is another good function to understand for manipulating/reporting data within Excel.

The usage of Excel amazes me at times. In the bank I used to work for virtually all of their reporting systems were built using SAS and Excel!

I'd have thought that you could just tell 'em that you have access to the world's premier Excel real-time advice site and you'll walk into the job

Then all you do is insist on a superfast link to stw, and off you go

(I mean, this lot ^ are OK, but I'm your man really; any questions about error bars, just call - day or night. I can do em in colour and [i]everything[/i])

Typically, you'll look at raw data in Sage/Sun etc, then do your analysis in Cognos or the like. Data will then be further manipulated in Excel, which to me (listed plc) is the equivalent of a pen and paper.

TSY is right - we accountants like to see workings, so a black box solution is no real use. Keep it simple wherever possible.