For the last four years I have been using an Excel spreadsheet to log the receipts for my wife’s music teaching business. In previous years I’d log each receipt with a code (ele - electricity bill, os - office supplies, etc), the date and the amount. Then I would sort this list of 200 - 300 items by code and date and confirm that I have each month’s utility bill. Each of those ranges I would name, sum them and name the sums: a lot of work, especially if I found another receipt or two.

This year I’m using DSUM and DCOUNT the “database like” functions of Excel. Now I don’t need to sort the receipts anymore. I just select on the codes to get the various sums. I also downloaded all 2005’s worth of chequing account transactions from my credit union in the form of a spreadsheet. Again I could use DSUM and DCOUNT to select and sum all the automatically deducted utility bills. After an afternoon (most of that was spent setting up the DSUM magic) and an evening’s work that part is done—a process that has taken me several weekends in the past.