Large or Small?!
A while ago I came up with the idea to calculate the number of days (and nights) my wife and I are in a relationship.
As I remember the day of our first kiss quite well it was easy for me to calculate this in Excel. It was roughly 9,800 days. Then I put a reminder in my calendar for the day when it would be 10,000 days and surprised my wife with this news and a bunch of flowers for the occasion.
And we both said that “being married for 25 years” sounds like a long time. And that in contrast “being a couple for 10,000 days” sounds not as impressive. We all perceive years as such a long and unfathomable timeframe. Therefore 25 years sounds massive.
And we all perceive a day as such a fleeting moment that 10,000 of these moments does not sound as impressive.
Well, I didn’t want to bore you with my personal love story here. And maybe I could encourage you to calculate the number of days you are together with your partner and surprise her or him when you find a day where the number of days is a number that is talking to you.
Xero or MYOB – does it matter?
Which is a great sequel to a very recent story where a volleyball team member asked me about my business.
I told him that I am helping my clients to improve their workflow and productivity by helping them with their Excel spreadsheets.
And one of the phrases I used was that “numbers speak to me.” Which is true, because where others see only numbers and stats I see pattern and percentages as well as trends and anomalies.
So my team mate told me about the business he works in and that they are still using MYOB as their accounting software. He would love to move them to XERO, but the owners don’t want to.
I concur that XERO is the more modern way. Still there is nothing wrong in using MYOB as well. The big question with all accounting software systems is: what are you doing with the data you put in?
Accounting is keeping track of what was. It’s a backwards oriented view on things. It’s like sailing a ship on Sydney harbour towards the North Head by looking back at the Harbour-Bridge all the time. You look back at your own wash and can see whether it is smooth or patchy.
You might find yourself exporting data from MYOB or XERO each month into Excel to create charts of all sorts and colours trying to make sense of the data.
Did you know that you can automate these tasks to a large extend using the internal programming language in Excel?
Your monthly analytics could be as simple as 1-2-3:
- pressing on Export Data in your accounting software – letting the system generate an export file.
- saving the file on your network in a designated folder.
- opening your Excel matrix and pressing on the Analyse button and letting the system generate your individual graphs, trends and information – completely on autopilot
And then you realise that you could do this analysis without any additional effort on a weekly basis instead monthly. Giving you more insights and faster feedback from your sales-data.
This gain in transparency can make all the difference to your next decision.
As for my mate from Volleyball. He is no longer looking at convincing the owners to change to XERO.
Together we are now looking at ways to give the owners better and faster insights from their data.
What could I do for you?
Maybe you find yourself not having the information you need to be decisive or you are finding your numbers confusing and inadequate. Let’s chat and maybe I can show you how to make more sense of your data and thereby take the risk out of your business decisions.
More than happy to have an initial chat over the phone – of course free of charge.
To book yourself a time, please use this link.
Remember that there is often times a better way to do things within Excel.
My offer is to do the analysis, create the solution and facilitate the implementation – all with German precision.