Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program used for organizing and managing data.

Excel is the most common spreadsheet tool used by accountants because of its powerful ability to manipulate data and perform functions.

Qs: So what is Excel?

How many rows are there in an Excel 2013 worksheet?

Over 1 million (1,048,576 to be precise)

And columns?

Over 16 thousand (16,384)

So how many cells, or data entry points does
that equal?

A staggering 17 billion cells

All this to demonstrate that excel is a very powerful data collection and analysis tool.

When there is the capability for this much data storage and access to this much information, it is easy to become bogged down and lost in data.

This is why it is important to understand the functions and formulas that are key to your responsibilities and how to use them.

Excel can be an extremely efficient tool, however if you are not using its functions as they were designed, it can become a very ineffective tool and use a lot of your precious time.