Why use Excel?

If you are not confident using Microsoft Excel, I understand that it can be daunting. Formulas! Maths! Computers! It’s not easy for everyone. However Microsoft Excel provides a huge amount of flexibility, in that you will be able to deal with the most simple of budgets, all the way to the most complicated. Without working in the confines of pre-determined parameters set by whatever software your company may use.

Excel easily provides you with the following benefits.

Flexibility: Not only can excel handle mathematical complications you have space to add in as much information as you require. If your client requests to see a new service or a new piece of data analysis, its easy to add it in. Later in this lesson you’ll see a list of additional information you should consider including in your budgets.

Accessible: Pretty much anyone that uses a computer has access to Excel, it’s not a given, but its a fair assumption. Therefore when it comes to needing to share your work with colleagues, clients or leaseholders its easy to collaborate.

Powerful: You can handle any type of budget in Excel. From the most simple budget template you have used in this lesson, right through to a huge multi-schedule, multi-tenure budget.

This is far from me saying that you have to, should or must use Microsoft Excel for creating your service charge budgets – far from it. What I am saying is Excel provides a low-cost, easily accessible and super powerful budget-creating tool. It has its issues, but if you know how to create budgets in Excel, you will have a superb understanding of the building blocks necessary for a budget. Transferring those skills to the various property management applications available will be easy.