Question

Q. Worksheet and financial reports
Write a business report (about 600 words) critically evaluating spreadsheets as a tool for accounting. Use Internet resources. Include a section on the advantages and disadvantages of spreadsheets. Refer to the Internet for advice on Business Report structures. Reference ALL your sources.

Answer 1

A business report is a written document that provides information, and sometimes analysis, to assist a business in making informed decisions. The main purpose of a business report is to make data that is relevant to the company, such as information regarding efficiency, competition, or procedures, easily available to everyone in the company. The report needs to make this data easy for the reader to understand. The best way to do that is to have clearly defined sections with labels and headings.

Types of Business Reports are:

Informational Reports

To provide information without opinion or suggestions, an informational report is typically the best format. For example, if you need information about how many employees work in each department and their job function, you would create an informational report. Another type of informational report might provide spending breakdowns by department or types of spending. Informational reports can be further broken down into time frames, such as weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually.

Analytical Reports

When a company is trying to solve a problem or make a decision, an analytical report might be necessary. These reports offer both a narration of facts as well as data, explanations and conclusions. For example, a quarterly sales analysis might detail corporate initiatives, sales, expenditures and profit and loss. An analytical report of this type might describe the company's advertising and promotional activities and their results.

Research Reports

When executives make decisions about new products and services, expanding personnel or layoffs, they might use research reports. The report typically offers the conclusions of the researcher(s) as well as alternate options and their potential outcomes, all backed up by the appropriate research.

Advantages of using spreadsheets:

• Efficiency: Saves time and Effort
• Mitigates problems related to staff turnover
• Consistency: In terms of Data (same queries / same criteria), Format, Design, Branding, etc
• Timeliness: Reports are ready as soon as data is available

Disadvantages of using spreadsheets:

• Difficulty in including exceptions since the data will be treated consistently, thus, in case there is an manual intervention required in a specific case, there may be an error in analysis
• Auto calculation in case there is a change in data by mistake or possibility of overwriting existing data with additional data
• Fear of security breach, Virus threats, file becoming corrupt, etc.

Use of Spreadsheets:

• Data Tables
• Graphs
• Complex Graphics
• Cover Pages
• Branding / Logos
• Formulae for referencing calculations
• Macros (for quick processing of data)
• Quick import of data from other sources (Access, SQL, ODBC, XML, Text files)

Excel Structure:

• Data tab (to put all the data)
• Process tab (to put all the formulae and data manipulation)
• Report tab (This shall be the final report. It shall contain no formulae, only cell references & graphs)

Important formulae:

• COUNT, COUNTIF
• SUM, SUMIF
• AVERAGE, AVERAGEIF
• MAX, MIN
• IF
• VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, LOOKUP
• INDEX, MATCH, OFFSET,

Important Concepts:

• Anchors: To fix a row or column element or both in a cell reference using “$”. Eg: $A$1
• Named Ranges: Refer to specific cell or specific range of cells. Eg: =SUM(A1:A10)
• Structured References: Used to refer to a specific element of a table
• Picture tool: Used to show a portion of sheet at another location in the workbook
• Macro tool: To either cycle through or Print off PDFs, or name them well, put them into well structured folders, etc.