Lauren Lummus

Author's posts

Feb 18

My Quixotic Pursuit of Microsoft Excel for the Android Platform

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
In a move that I can’t imagine occurring during Steve Ballmer’s reign, Microsoft has released Android versions of Microsoft Excel. I don’t have an Android phone, or the inclination to procure one, but I did want to try out the tablet version. On the Apple platform the latest versions of Excel for iPhone and iPad are surprisingly usable. Comparatively, the early iterations of Excel for iPhone were laughably unusable, but the iPad version hit the ground strong. It was easy for me to install Excel on my Apple devices, but I almost gave up trying to get access to Excel for Android.
Continue reading on www.accountingweb.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.

Jan 29

Use Excel to File Your 2014 Form 1040 and Related Schedules

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
The brinksmanship between Congress and the Internal Revenue Service seems to ratchet up every year with the ever-present “will they or won’t they” approach to tax legislation. Yet amidst the annual chaos there is one rock-steady constant: the Excel-based version of Excel 1040 published by Glenn Reeves of Burlington, Kansas. This filing season marks his eighteenth spreadsheet-based version of the U.S. Individual Income Tax Return. Citizen Reeves continues to help his fellow taxpayers who wish to avoid the tedium of paper-based filing, as well as the chaos inflicted by online tax form providers changing their prices and features unexpectedly.
Continue reading on www.accountingweb.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.

Jan 25

Use Excel to Keep an Eye on Your BMI This Busy Season

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
Let’s assume that you’ve bought into the quantified-self craze. Your wearable technology measures every breath you take and every move you make, so now it's time for new frontiers, as in something other than the fast food drive-thru lane. It’s always easiest to start with low-hanging fruit, such as your co-workers. Body Mass Index is a snap to calculate with Excel. You’re just two simple measurements and a worksheet function away. You’ll make Professor Don Tillman proud.
Continue reading on www.goingconcern.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.

Jan 20

Analyze QuickBooks Data with Excel Pivot Tables

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
When it’s time to crunch numbers in QuickBooks, most users rely on reports within the software, while others turn to analytics programs. In either case, you may still sometimes need to look at your accounting data in new ways. In such cases, pivot tables can make quick work of sussing out patterns or issues with your data that might be hard to discover otherwise. In Excel, pivot tables allow you to create instant reports and/or charts by simply dragging and dropping fields with your mouse. This means you can quickly rearrange even massive reports into interactive, yet compact summaries.
Continue reading on www.sleeter.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.

Dec 09

How You Can Determine The First Sunday in a Month in Excel

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
I was recently asked if there was an easy way to determine the first Sunday in a month. As you might expect, it can be tedious to manually determine the first Sunday of each month in an expense report spreadsheet. But you can do it more automatically: It’s a simple matter of using the WEEKDAY and CHOOSE functions together.
Continue reading on www.accountingweb.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.

Dec 03

Mastering the Conversion of Minutes to Hours/Minutes in Excel

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
Working with time values in Excel often gives users fits. This is because Excel stores times as a decimal portion of a day. Thus 12 hours is the same as 0.5. Three and a half-hours is represented as 0.145833333333333. Understanding this decimal concept along with Excel’s time-based number formats will help you whip time-based values into shape.
Continue reading on www.accountingweb.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.

Nov 18

QuickBooks Statement Writer vs. Excel FSM

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
Creating financial statements from QuickBooks data can be a tricky endeavor. Yes, it’s easy enough to chooseReports, Company and Financial, and then Profit & Loss—as long as you don’t mind account numbers embedded into your P&L report. QuickBooks Premier Accountant Edition and Enterprise Solutions users have a built–in tool known as QuickBooks Statement Writer that allows deep integration between Excel and QuickBooks, as well as Microsoft Word. A third-party application called Excel FSM offers functionality similar to the QuickBooks Statement Writer to users of all versions of QuickBooks, both Desktop and Online. A fourth option is to roll your own financial statements in Excel without the benefit of any add-ons. In this article I’ll provide an overview of the pros and cons of each of these approaches.
Continue reading on www.sleeter.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.

Nov 11

Troubleshooting When Excel Goes Awry

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
It can be maddening when a trusted program such as Microsoft Excel suddenly starts exhibiting odd behavior. It’s sometimes difficult to tell if the culprit is Excel, Windows, or some sort of malware that’s wormed its way into your computer. In this article I’ll run through my typical list of items to rule-out when Excel seems to misbehave.
Continue reading on www.sleeter.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.

Nov 04

Freezing a Middle Row in Excel While Scrolling Above

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
Reader Fiona posed an interesting question on my article regarding taking the pain out of freezing panes in Excel. She asked: “I want to freeze a row in the middle of a sheet but have the rows above it and below it to scroll together. Is this possible?” It is indeed, which I'll demonstrate in this article.
Continue reading on www.accountingweb.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.

Nov 04

Charting QuickBooks Data

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
You may be surprised to discover that QuickBooks offers over one dozen charts. Some of these are buried within theReports menus, while others appear within the Company Snapshot feature. In this article I’ll show you to fastest way to access charts in QuickBooks, tricks for interacting with these charts, as well as a few charting tricks in Microsoft Excel.
Continue reading on www.sleeter.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.

Oct 30

How to Convert Spreadsheets to PDF With the Push of Button

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
So you regularly create spreadsheet masterworks, but the thought of sharing the details of your genius makes you break out in hives. One way to separate the outputs from your inputs is to save spreadsheets as a PDF file. It’s not hard to do so by way of the File menu, if you don’t mind a generous helping of carpal tunnel on the side. Reclaim part of your day by creating an icon that will let you PDF any spreadsheet with ease. As an added bonus, you’ll get a keyboard shortcut that’ll help out on those bad mouse days.
Continue reading on www.goingconcern.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.

Oct 27

Keyboard Shortcuts for Saving & Emailing Spreadsheets as PDF

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
Saving Excel spreadsheets as PDF files has gotten incrementally easier over the years, but can still require more effort than necessary. When saving a document as a PDF, many users go through several mouse clicks on the File menu instead of choosing PDF as the file type in Excel's Save As dialog box. However, this technique can be streamlined even further with a single mouse-click or keyboard shortcut. Emailing a spreadsheet as a PDF attachment can be simplified in the same fashion, as I'll explain in this article.
Continue reading on www.accountingweb.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.

Sep 18

Backing Up and Restoring Excel Workbooks

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
As you’re likely aware, you can establish automatic, unattended back-ups of your QuickBooks data. Further, if you’re using the cloud based QuickBooks Online, then practically every keystroke you make is backed up as you go. It’s a different world in Microsoft Excel, however. Users sometimes inadvertently lose hours of work on a given spreadsheet. Reasons might include forgetting to save, workbooks that get corrupted, or any number of other scenarios. In this article I’ll discuss some measures that you can take to establish a similar sense of security for your Excel spreadsheets that you have with QuickBooks.
Continue reading on www.sleeter.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.

Sep 16

Timesaving File Menu Tricks in Excel 2010-2013

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
You probably don't want to think about how many times you access the File menu in Excel 2010 or 2013. Personally I think Excel 2010 has the best possible File menu arrangement, other than having Print Preview grafted onto it (but you can fix that). I feel that we lost ground in Excel 2013 because frequent actions like Opening and Saving files require extra mouse clicks that result in additional wear-and-tear on your wrists. In this article I'll share a few tricks you can use to take back a tiny portion of your day.
Continue reading on www.accountingweb.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.

Sep 12

Excel Can Help You Choose Where to Get a Meaty Lunch

by David Ringstrom,CPA
 
The Internet’s viral sensation of August 2014 was an off-menu Arby’s sandwich known as the “Meat Mountain.” For the low, low price of $10 you can get a stack of eight meats and two cheeses. I think even PETA has been too shocked to respond. And what exactly does this have to do with Microsoft Excel? I’m going to help you use two worksheet cells to create a clickable link to your nearest purveyor of said Meat Mountain. I’ll then show you how to create clickable links to more relevant information, such as property tax bills, or specific locations within a workbook.
Continue reading on www.goingconcern.com.
About the author:

David H. Ringstrom, CPA, heads up Accounting Advisors, Inc., an Atlanta-based software and database consulting firm providing training and consulting services nationwide. Contact David at david@acctadv.com or follow him on Twitter. David speaks at conferences about Microsoft Excel and presents webcasts for several CPE providers, including AccountingWEB partner CPE Link.