Making months?

**khoelle** · 11-18-2009, 02:57 AM

Well my mom asked me to make up a excel sheet to help with my dads small business taxes. I have a pretty good template made up right now, but its only for 1 month at a time. I haven't really ever messed with excel much and I don't know if this is possible but I already have drop down lists for expense types, but would it be possible to make a drop down of each month and have those 4 sheets come up for the month. I'll attach my template that I have so far. I haven't added profit/loss yet but everything else is pretty much done.

Thanks

Kevin

**zbor** · 11-18-2009, 03:08 AM

I think this would be much better with Pivot table.
Then you could easily handle all expenses by all months, years, accounts and everything else.

**khoelle** · 11-18-2009, 01:13 PM

My understanding of pivot tables is just a useful tool for organization when you have data. I wasn't able to figure out how to make it data entry friendly. But I may just be doing a step wrong.

**Palmetto** · 11-18-2009, 02:45 PM

I think the first step here is get the correct structure in place. Currently you are using individual sheets to separate expense types - this is not necessary and, in fact, will complicate the task.

For all related raw data, it is is generally best to use a single worksheet setup in a classic database structure, meaning:

The first row is the header and each cell on this row identifies a type of data to be entered down the column. Note: "first row" does not necessarily mean row-1 - your header row could start on row 5 and rows 1-4 be blank.

All rows below the header are records.

Once you have the right layout, virtually any kind of reporting is possible and easily facilitated, including Pivot Tables.

See these helpful links for getting off to the right start.
Efficient spreadsheet design

Excel & VBA Golden Rules

See here for lots of help and examples to download on all sorts of Excel topics: Contextures