Publications
Author and award winning instructor Jeff Lenning CPA has written several books and 40+ articles featured in various publications. We've compiled them all in a single place for easy reference.
Back in the old days, when I used workpapers that were made with, you know, paper, I used a red pencil to create cross-references that made it easy to navigate to related documents. I remember feeling very organized because every document was indexed and part of a collection. Now, things are different. I get annoyed when I need to print something. And, when…
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Microsoft recently released Office 2016, and with it, the next version of my favorite program—which is, of course, Excel. The user interface is about the same as 2013 and you’ll feel right at home. Microsoft focused on expanding Excel’s data visualization capabilities by introducing several new chart types and on Excel’s ability to import and transform…
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If you haven’t checked out Excel’s conditional formatting feature recently, you’re missing out on some nice enhancements. The feature formats a cell based on its value. Excel continuously monitors the cell value and updates the formatting as the cell value changes. Conditional formatting has traditionally been limited to basic cell formatting such as fill and…
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There are often several ways in Excel to accomplish any goal. For example, when building reports, we can use formulas or PivotTable. When building a formula-based report, we typically set up the report labels as desired and then write Excel formulas to compute the amount values and subtotals. This is a terrific approach when we…
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Have you ever had two lists in Excel and wondered what items on one list appear on the other? For example, you’ve exported a check register from your accounting system and downloaded activity from your bank’s website, and you simply wanted to know which checks cleared the bank. That is, which checks on the checklist…
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How do you know your workbook is accurate? This question is important because it’s our responsibility to ensure that data flows properly through the workbook, with numbers that tie out, and with reports that are internally consistent. One way to help ensure workbook accuracy is by creating a worksheet within the workbook dedicated to this…
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Many financial systems do a fine job of generating standard reports, but accountants often need more. In those cases, accountants can create custom solutions in Excel, but that approach has drawbacks. For instance, a typical process may involve exporting some type of data, perhaps a trial balance, and then opening it in Excel. Once the…
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Excel 2013 Highlights The next version of my most favorite program is here—it’s finally here! Excel 2013 is available, and I’m excited to review some of the highlights. Microsoft clearly invested a lot of time into this product. Here are just a few of the things you’ll notice about Excel 2013. Microsoft Kept the…
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What would you bring if you were stranded on a desert island? I would bring Microsoft Excel because it’s the only application I would need! It stores more than 17 billion cells in a single sheet, summarizes data with Pivot Tables, generates charts and has a built-in Web browser. Excel, in my opinion, is the…
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Did you know Excel has a built-in web browser with a special feature other browsers don’t? The Excel browser visually identifies and allows you to select web tables, and then import them into Excel in a structured way. The best thing is that once you have imported a table, you can refresh the data range…
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