I am pretty familiar with NPV's and IRR and understand what they are supposed to do and how they work. I also believe that I understand how to use the Excel functions for these two calculations, but perhaps I am mistaken. I noticed a sizable discrepancy between the results utilizing the functions, and independent calculations performed within Excel that duplicate what NPV and IRR are supposed to calculate.

To oversimplify, if I invest $1,000,000 now, and return $1,000,000 at the end of the first period, using a 10% discount rate, I should be down $90,909. However, when I do the same calculation and post the return at the end of the second, third, tenth, or fifteenth period, my losses should increase. They are not. That means to me, either I am using the function wrongly, or the function is not working properly.

Can someone help?