Exploring Office 2007: Analyzing with Excel Los Angeles CA

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As a business owner you spend a lot of your decision-making time comparing different business scenarios. It might be the cost of a new product, tweaking budget figures, or it might be comparing different leases or products you're considering purchasing.

Regardless of what you're calculating you want to compare different solutions to determine which is best for you. Microsoft Excel is a handy tool for analyzing different scenarios, and its Scenario manager tool helps you manage the task of comparing options side-by-side. Create a Worksheet Model

To use Excel's Scenario tool you first need to create a spreadsheet with formulas that make calculations you'll use as the basis for your analysis. This type of worksheet is typically called a model, and it is here that you will enter the numbers for each of the items you are comparing.

The example we'll use is a product-pricing calculator that calculates the total unit price of items purchased taking into account bulk discounts, sales tax, and shipping and handling costs. This calculator is a useful way to calculate and compare like products that come in different quantities and come from different suppliers.

The worksheet contains cells into which you place information and cells that make calculations ? each is differently colored. If you're interested in creating this worksheet yourself so you can follow along with the article, here are the cells and their contents: Cell Number Cell Contents B2 Product Pricing Calculator B4 Product B5 Supplier B6 Number in box B7 Price per box B8 Price per unit B9
Boxes for discount B10 Bulk discount B11 Savings per unit B12 Discounted unit price B13 Discounted box price B14 Boxes required B15 Number of items purchased B16 Total box price B17 Sales Tax B18 Shipping and Handling B19 Total shipping price B20 Total per unit price(inc ship&tax) C8 =C7/C6 C11 =C8*C10 C12 =C8-C11 C13 =C12*C6 C15 =C14*C6 C16 =IF(C14 C19 =(C16*(1+C17))+C18 C20 =C19/(C6*C14)

Once you have created your model, save your worksheet. Now you're ready to get started. Start by entering the data for the first product you are interested in. Here's some data to get you started:
Cell Number Cell Contents C4 Shiny bright paper C5 Cheap papers C6 10 C7 385 C9 10 C10 15% C14
4

You can view any scenario from the Scenario Manager dialog by selecting it and clicking Show
(Click for larger image) Adding Scenarios to Your Toolbar

You can add a Scenario dialog to your toolbar by right-clicking a toolbar and choosing the Customize tab and then Commands. From the Tools category, locate and select the Scenario listbox and drag and drop it onto a toolbar, and then close the Customize dialog. You can now view a Scenario of your choice by selecting it in the Scenario list.

Edit a Scenario

To edit a scenario, choose Tools and then Scenario. Select the scenario to edit and click the Edit button and then OK. Change any values that require alteration and click OK to save the changes. To view the results, click the Scenario in the list and click Show to view it.

Side-By-Side Scenario Reports

Choose the results you want to see and that will give you the best basis for your comparison
(Click for larger image) While the Scenario Manager makes it easy to view one scenario at a time, you may prefer to view the results side-by-side. To do this, create a Scenario Report by choosing Tools and then Scenarios and clicking the Summary button. Select the Scenario Summary option and click the Result Cells box.

Here you will enter the cells that you want to use as the basis for your comparison. In our situation we will choose the product name and supplier cells, as this provides identifying information about the scenario, the number of items that we will purchase, the box price, shipping price, and price per unit, which lets us compare how much we will spend per item and overall.

To select these cells, click the first cell and then hold down the Control key while you click on the others in turn. You will select cells C4, C5, C15, C16, C19, and C20. Click OK when you are done. This creates a new sheet that displays the cells you selected as well as the cells that contain the data on which the scenario is based.

You can collapse and format your summary to get a report that makes comparison easy
(Click for larger image) The first set of data in the report displays the current values in the worksheet. If these are simply duplicates, you can hide this column. The worksheet itself is an outlined worksheet so you can expand or collapse various areas of the worksheet using the buttons on the far left of the worksheet.

Notice that the order in which you clicked the cells you wanted to show is the order in which the cells are displayed in the scenario summary. You can use this feature to select cells in the order that you want to see them in the resulting report. You will find the scenario summary is useful tool for comparing side-by-side results for different items you are considering purchasing.

You will need to delete the scenario summary worksheet and recreate the summary if the values in any of your scenarios change, since the summary report contains static figures and does not automatically update if you add new information.

Scenarios make a smart addition to your Excel toolkit and are a handy feature of the program that you can put to use when employing comparisons to aid in business decision-making.

----------------------------------- Helen Bradley is a respected international journalist writing regularly for small business and computer publications in the USA, Canada, South Africa, UK and Australia. You can learn more about her at her Web site, HelenBradley.com -----------------------------------

Adapted from Small Business Computing

Be sure to check out all of Helen's articles in the Exploring Office 2007 series:

* Article 1: Using SmartArt Graphics * Article 2: Outlook 2007 Tips & Tricks * Article 3: PowerPoint 2007 Tips and Tricks * Article 4: Excel 2007 Tips for Creating Charts * Article 5: Take Charge with Office 2007 Themes * Article 6: Analyzing with Excel * Article 7: A Perfect Print Everytime in Excel 2007 * Article 8: Taming Word 2007 Styles * Article 9: Working Collaboratively in Word 2007