Page 113 - Budgeting for Managers

Budgeting for Managers
96
we are making a budget, we may add new line items to the bot-
tom of the list, just above the total. If we aren’t careful, we may
forget to adjust the total range, so that the new items aren’t
included. The automatic cross-checking tools in the next sec-
tion will help you catch these errors.
Automatic Cross-Checking in Spreadsheets
The most common error in a budget spreadsheet is a column or
row total that is not adding up all the figures it should be adding
up. There are two common causes of this problem.
The first is an inserted row that is not counted in the column
totals. This can happen if a row is inserted at the bottom of a
column of figures. The total below that list of figures may not
include the final row.
The second common cause of budget spreadsheet errors is
copying formulas without checking them to make sure that the
formulas are now adding the correct cells. We may find that the
total at the bottom of one column is actually adding up a differ-
ent column. For example, we may have the total at the bottom
of the February column adding up the figures for January.
There is a simple, automatic way to catch these errors, as
illustrated in Tables 6-2 and 6-3.
In Table 6-2, columns B, C, and D are each totaled on row 6
and rows 2 through 5 are totaled in column E. Cell E6 at the
bottom of the total column should come out the same, whether
A B C D E F
1 January February March Total
2 Salary $5,000.00 $5,200.00 $4,400.00 $14,600.00
3Utilities $500.00 $200.00 $450.00 $1,150.00
4 Insurance $250.00 $250.00 $250.00 $250.00$750.00
5 Printing $300.00 $100.00 $450.00$450.00 $850.00
$5,550.00
6Total $6,050.00 $5,750.00 $5,550.00 $17,350.00 $17,350.00
7 $—
Table 6-2. Spreadsheet error checking, example