what is spreadsheet

what is spreadsheet

The majority of application software developed for business is designed to meet the information needs of management. Besides decisions are commonly based on numerical information.

You may be a business person, a student or a teacher, or perhaps you are an accountant, lawyer, physician, financial analyst, or real estate investor. In many situations, you have a bunch of numerical data which you need to organize to assist you in making a decision. You usually know what formulas to use and you can organize them with pencil, paper and a pocket calculator. Sometimes this is very tedious and a change in one data will require a complete recalculation.

Did you ever wonder if you could afford to buy a computer? If you save 100 dollar a month this year and increase the amount by 5% each year, how much can you save in 5 years? What if you increase the amount by 8% instead? What if you start with 150 dollar a month? This work involves many hours of tedious calculations and recalculations.

This is where an electronic spreadsheet program comes in. It lets the computer be the pencil, the sheet of paper, and the calculator.

Spreadsheet software has three advantages over pencil, paper and calculator. First, the speed and accuracy at which the computer can perform calculations enables the user to review data trends much sooner than if done by hand. Second, the electronic spreadsheet has built into it all the basic financial, mathematical, statistical, and scientific formulas. This greatly enhances the efficiency of the user. Finally, if any of the data is modified, the electronic spreadsheet recomputes the entire spreadsheet automatically and almost instantly. Any thing that can be done with a pencil, a pad of paper, and a calculator can be done faster and far more accurately with an electronic spreadsheet.

Two Harvard Business School students, Daniel Bricklin and Robert Frankston, developed the first electronic spreadsheet program in 1978. They named it VisiCalc. It was initially written for Apple II personal computer, but it has since been converted to run virtually on any micro. The demand for additional features and sophistication led to the development of a new generation of spreadsheet software. This generation was born with the introduction of Lotus 1-2-3 in 1982. It was written explicitly for the IBM PC.

Since 1-2-3, another generation of spreadsheets has been introduced. This includes a word processor, increased the spreadsheet capability, more graphic functions and a network communication capability. Framework and Symphony are two of the more popular third generation spreadsheet programs.

Enable, QuattroPro, Multiplan, PeachCalc, pfs:plan, Smart Spreadsheet, SuperCalc3, -Microsoft Excel are other examples of spreadsheet software available. Of all these, Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel are most widely used in our country.

Nowadays electronic spreadsheets are a multifaceted tool. Though they are mainly intended for business accounting purposes, yet scientific and engineering, presentation graphics, database management applications are very common. Here a number of possible applications are described. Spreadsheets can be used to help automate financial statements, business forecasting, transaction registers, inventory control, accounts receivable, accounts payable etc.

Financial models can be created that let you play what-if. By changing one or more variables, the model recalculates, and a new set of results can be presented in tabular and/or graphical format.

Electronic spreadsheet (also called worksheets) provides many built-in statistical, analytical, and scientific formulas. Thus it can be used in many scientific and engineering environments to crunch numbers and present findings.

Nowadays spreadsheets support powerful, flexible graphical presentations. Worksheets can include charts and graphs, and can be formatted for high impact presentations.

Spreadsheets can also be used as a database management tool. Here database manipulation is simple. You can perform many database requirements very quickly though it lack certain features found in typical database management programs.

Electronic spreadsheets can also be used as a powerful application development tool. You may create serious large scale custom applications using them.

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