How Microsoft Excel helps you improve your Accounting Skills and Experience
Does Microsoft Excel Helps You In Improving Your Accounting Skills And Experience?
Microsoft Excel is a valuable tool in the hands of Accounting and Finance professionals. It offers a wide range of benefits from preparing Journals or Ledgers to preparing Financial Statements: Income statement, Balance sheet and Cash Flow statement. It is of great help and assistance to Financial Analysis as well.
There are lots of tools and functions available in Microsoft Excel that aid accounting professionals greatly in performing various tasks in relation to financial accounting and reporting. All that you need is to have a good grasp of Microsoft Excel, so that you can extract benefits from Microsoft Excel in a successful manner.
If you are interested to know how Microsoft Excel is helpful for you in developing your accounting skills and leading you to gain more experience in the field of accounting, then this article is for you, as it discusses as to how you can do so.
There are times when it is essential for accounting professionals to prepare various schedules, such as, schedule of prepaid expenses, schedule of accruals, schedule of unearned income, depreciation or amortization schedules etc., as the schedules are to be used as supporting to the Journal Entries. In doing so, it's important that you have expert knowledge or mastery over Excel. Microsoft Excel enables you to prepare schedules allowing you to use several formulas and functions and shortcuts. Besides, as an accounting professional, you need to prepare various ledgers or statement of accounts, so that you can make use of them whenever it is required. For all these tasks to be performed in an effective and efficient manner, Microsoft Excel is of great assistance, as it will not only make the process faster, but also enables you to gain more exposure to accounting related activities.
More often than not, you may be asked to prepare some reports on ad hoc basis.
If you are good at excel, you can do so. This would also lead you to enhance your speed of performing your tasks faster and in a more efficient manner. Some of the important skills listed by job and types of Skills that may be improved with the help of Microsoft Excel are as follows:
- Using Worksheet(s) for Journal Entries or JVs
- Account Reconciliation
- Bank Reconciliations
- Accounts Payable
- Accounts Receivable
- Schedules for Prepayments
- Schedules for Accruals
- Aging Reports
- Designing and Developing Payrolls using worksheets
- Sorting data
- Asset Management reports
- Income Statement - Summary and Detailed
- Balance Sheet - Summary and Detailed
- Cash Flow Statement
- Annual Reports
- Reports/Schedules for Audit
- Analysis
At this stage, it is worth mentioning that skill is the ability to do something well gained through experience. And experience is nothing but the active involvement in related activities and exposure to the events. It's also appropriate to mention that efficiency is the degree to which something is done without wasted energy or effort. Since you are able to unfetter the capabilities of Microsoft Excel by using it for your accounting related tasks repeatedly, you can become more efficient and it will ultimately lead you to increase your knowledge and skills.
It must be noted that accounting field demands accuracy in terms of reporting and analysis. It requires to maintain an effective and efficient reporting system. The objective that an accurate reporting system may be developed and presented to the intended parties as and when needed, is attained with the help and assistance of Microsoft Excel.
All these things are possible if you have a good command of Microsoft Excel and unleash its capabilities to its optimum level. This way, while performing the accounting related activities, you can sharpen your skills and gain rich experience to carry out your tasks proficiently.