Calculating Investments

Calculating Depreciation

Analyzing Securities

Using the Euro Currency Tools Add-In

WITH the financial functions provided with Microsoft Excel 2010, you can perform common business calculations, such as net present value and future value, without building long and complex formulas. These functions are the heart of spreadsheets—the word spreadsheet itself refers to the seemingly antiquated system of using special grid paper to track financial information. Functions have taken the place of the old 10-key calculator sequences (algorithms) used by accounting professionals before computers revolutionized the discipline.

The financial functions built into Excel fall into three major categories: investments, depreciation, and securities. The functions included within each category accept similar arguments. To streamline this chapter, we first define the common arguments and then discuss their implementation in the individual functions. Excel 2010 offers more than 50 financial functions, and in this chapter we touch on most of them, with special emphasis on those most often used, needed, or misunderstood. For complete information about all the built-in functions that Excel has to offer, you can use the onscreen tools covered in Using the Built-In Function Reference in Excel on page 527.