Microsoft Excel is one of the most widely used computer programs in the world. Its competitor, Google Sheets, is also massive in the business space for everything ranging from sole traders all the way up to multinational corporations.
If you’re not currently using these programs, you may wonder how men such as yourself can use them within your business. The fact is, spreadsheets and the formulas within them can help you manage almost every aspect of your business, and they can help you stay on top of:
- Finance
- Accounting
- Scheduling
- Marketing
- Human resources
- And much more
Although the use of these programs is often associated with an office environment, a bricklayer, baker, or any other blue-collar business owner can benefit from integrating Excel or Sheets into the daily running of their company too.
Here’s how:
Scheduling
Depending on the size of your business, using spreadsheet schedules can be a time-saving method to creating rosters for your employees.
You can easily add formulas to check if the hours are being allocated relatively and work out overtime, pay, tax, and plenty of other outputs straight from the schedule. These facts could link easily into a budget sheet too.
Using spreadsheets also means you can sort by employee name to give them an individual shift report or sort by date to send out a whole team schedule.
Even if you already use a different program for your scheduling and payment, such as Quickbooks, SAP, or Oracle, you can import the data into Excel or Sheets to summarize expenses, discover trends in your employees, and understand how your workforce is spread out.
Finance and Accounting
Any billion-dollar corporate office will have hundreds of employees with their computer screens full of spreadsheets at any one time. That doesn’t mean using spreadsheets for the same purpose isn’t possible for small businesses too.
Small companies have fewer throughputs. So, they need less manpower working on spreadsheets to stay on top of their financial commitments.
You can use Excel or Google Sheets to create budgets, forecasts and to plan for major company decisions. You can use a range of formulas to accomplish this. Even simple formulas such as subtraction, addition, multiplication, and division become more accessible if the date is already in a spreadsheet. That is without even considering the more complex functions spreadsheets are capable of, such as:
- IF functions
- Vlookup
- Index match
- Pivot tables
Marketing
Marketing is often the most begrudged part of running a small to medium-sized business. Most of us like to get on with our actual job without having to worry about landing clients.
You can take some of the pain out of marketing by first analyzing your data. And, what type of program is perfect for that? Spreadsheet software, of course.
Listing your customer details can help you to retarget customers with your marketing strategies. You can also use the formulas to manage your sales team based on past results.
The programs make it easy to drag and drop new data into existing formulas.
Share The Work
Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are cross-compatible, so you can use them in tandem with businesses running the opposing product.
Any formulas that you use in your spreadsheets will work across departments in your company as well as any other businesses you work alongside.
Being able to share work is imperative for scaling your business. It also allows you to outsource your: accounting, scheduling, marketing, or any other part of your business that you currently use spreadsheets for.
The natural shareability of these programs means you could have several people working on a single spreadsheet at any one time. Meaning you can keep track of your team’s progress in real-time.
Spreadsheet Formulas Have Longevity
Excel has used the same formula codes since its induction in the ’80s. Despite Microsoft and Google adding plenty of new features, old documentation can still be used and restored today.
You can rest assured knowing that any formulations you create on your spreadsheet will be forward compatible with your business as it grows in the future. This could help you avoid any problems with tax or abiding by laws.
Data retention is essential as proof you are abiding by any laws that impact your business. Spreadsheet software helps you stay on top of this and is easily stored on the cloud to come back to whenever necessary.
Men Need To Take Care Of Their Paperwork In Their Business
Overall, using spreadsheets and their built-in formulas will help your business run a lot smoother. If you aren’t using them already, there’s no reason not to upgrade your knowledge of these programs and integrate them into your company.
