Excel - My Guilty Pleasure

I'm not a typical IT guy. I don't have a Blackberry. I don't carry a cellphone. My home computer is an off-the-shelf HP Pavilion with upgraded RAM. I don't have satellite or cable. We didn't even have DSL internet until my wife learned she could talk to her mother in Europe for free with Skype. I've never had any secret programming project at home that will make me rich some day.

But I do love to tinker with Excel. It all began with my family budget. I use Quicken for my home finances. I like it. It works well. But they didn't handle budgeting--not really. They still don't. Not the way I like to do it, anyway. So though I'm loathe to duplicate effort, I created a spreadsheet to accompany Quicken so I could see at a glance where I am with my monthly budget.

That spreadsheet has evolved over the years. It began with a simple list of budget categories and budget targets. To the right of each category in an ever-increasing row I'd list any transactions that fit that category. I'd then sum that row to know what my current expenditures were.

It was messy, though. The next year I created a new version that took the more common categories (like food or household expenses that have lots of transactions during a month, as opposed to the electric bill that I pay only once) and created columns off the side to enter transactions in to be totaled, and that total recorded with each category in the list so I could compare expected, actual, and difference.

The main problem with that spreadsheet was on split category transactions. If we went to the store and bought some items that count against the food category, some items that count against pet supplies, and some items that count against home maintenance I could record them in their appropriate categories, but I couldn't link them to each other. Tracking transactions after the fact was difficult.

So this year I got fancy. I have one column for all transactions. I record the payee, the amount, and the category code in one continuous column. Split-category purchases are all right next to each other for easy reference. But the spreadsheet goes through that column and totals all the transactions by category and enters them in the appropriate place in my budget category list. If later on I need to recategorize a transaction I just change the code rather than having to cut and paste the transaction to another column.

Oh, and did I mention that my spreadsheet automatically detects how many paychecks I get per month and adjusts certain budget targets accordingly? For example, I get paid weekly right now. Sometimes there'll be a month with five paydays instead of four. Since my food budget is calculated based on so much per week, on five-week months I need to automatically adjust upward by 25%. My spreadsheet does that for me.

So yes, I'm an Excel geek. It comes in handy at work, I'll tell you. Just this week I created a spreadsheet to help customers requesting services from our group. They check the boxes representing functionality they want and by the time they're done the spreadsheet will recommend which solution they should ask for.

This week I also discovered macros! This could revolutionize everything!

Anyway, I'm a big fan of spreadsheets. I even have one to help generate role-playing game character sheets. You enter the character's attributes and it'll fill in all the resulting data points that are based on that attribute. It's really quite cool, and looks so neat and orderly when I print them out.

Take my word for it.

So there you have it. I may curse Microsoft Word to the sky some days, but I've got nothing but love for Excel.

Most of the time.