Sunday 31 December 2006

Introduction to the unit

Spreadsheets are key software for many businesses and organisations, helping them to keep track of numerical information and analyse it quickly and more easily than with paper records. Accounting and finance use spreadsheets to record the transactions made by organisations. They have replaced manual pages in ledgers, where income and expenditure are organised into rows and columns. Users can make use of inbuilt functionality to help them to understand the data without needing specialist mathematical skills. Utilities such as ordering, sorting and filtering will show the same data in different ways. Charts and graphs help to display information more visually. Complex calculations can be carried out using library functions or users can choose to create their own formulae. One of the main advantages of spreadsheet software is that it can be customised with buttons and macros. IT practitioners can use many features, for example to restrict user access to whole workbooks, spreadsheets or parts of spreadsheets.

Spreadsheets can be saved in a number of different formats. The most useful format is comma separated value (csv), as this particular format can be read by many applications which means that data created in one type of spreadsheet software can be exported easily to other programs. This technology enables organisations to be more knowledgeable about their own activities. This, in turn, allows managers to make decisions more quickly which can lead to organisations gaining competitive advantage.

As IT practitioners, learners will need to be able to use spreadsheet software competently as well as being able to support users as part of a technical or helpdesk role.

Learning outcomes
On completion of this unit a learner should:

1 Understand how spreadsheets can be used to solve complex problems

2 Be able to develop complex spreadsheet models

3 Be able to automate and customise spreadsheet models

4 Be able to test and document spreadsheet models.