What Are the Benefits of Electronic Spreadsheets?

Spreadsheets provide an organized way of tracking and presenting financial information. They are used to ensure a company's financials were accounted for properly. With the expansion of computer technology and the widespread use of business software, electronic spreadsheets were born. Today, electronic spreadsheets are more common and used more often than paper spreadsheets. There are numerous benefits to electronic spreadsheets.

Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets have long been a staple of accounting professionals everywhere. They are traditionally used to track revenues and expenses for businesses and individuals. The basic feature of spreadsheets is that rows and columns merge to create cells. They can hold a vast amount of information, more than traditional paper spreadsheets.

Benefits

Electronic spreadsheets have built-in formulas, automatic formatting and graphing capabilities. With the built-in formulas, it is not necessary to perform lengthy, complex calculations to arrive at an answer. The automatic formatting makes the spreadsheets more presentation friendly and it makes creating the spreadsheet faster. The graphing capabilities allow the data to be presented in a chart format, which makes interpreting the data easier.

Software

The most popular electronic spreadsheet software is Microsoft Excel. It is very common among business and individual users and it integrates well with other productivity software.

Multiple spreadsheets

Electronic spreadsheets allow for calculation across multiple spreadsheets whereas paper spreadsheets make this task very difficult and time consuming.

Distribution

Electronic spreadsheets can be sent to numerous recipients via email and shared across different locations in a matter of minutes. Paper spreadsheets need to be faxed or mailed; this would take more time to distribute. Additionally, parts of the spreadsheets can be locked to prevent data from being modified.

Resources

• Microsoft Excel overview
• Overview of Microsoft Excel formulas