Excel Accountant: Payroll Analysis

Learning Objectives

• To recall how to reformat Social Security Numbers using Excel’s Flash Fill feature.
• To define how to assign random numbers to a data set in Excel.
• To apply password-protection techniques for sensitive payroll files, worksheets, and spreadsheet columns.

Course Description

Excel offers payroll professionals many features and functions that can improve the accuracy and efficiency of payroll production. In this comprehensive course, Excel expert David Ringstrom, CPA, explains mathematics for employee timesheets, date and time formatting and stamping, conditional formatting to highlight HR requirements, password protection for sensitive payroll files and worksheets, salary information formatting, using pivot tables for HR reporting and analysis tasks, and more.

David demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the subscription-based Microsoft 365 version of Excel. David draws your attention to any differences in the older versions of Excel (2019, 2016, 2013, and earlier) during the presentation as well as in his detailed handouts. David also provides an Excel workbook that includes most of the examples he uses during the webcast.

Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based product that provides new feature updates as often as monthly. Conversely, the perpetual licensed versions of Excel have feature sets that don’t change. Perpetual licensed versions have year numbers, such as Excel 2019, Excel 2016, and so on.

Who Would Be Interested in This Course:

Payroll professionals who wish to learn practical Excel fundamentals to improve the accuracy and efficiency of payroll production.  

Topics covered:

• Computing the due dates for semi-monthly federal payroll tax deposits by using the CHOOSE and WEEKDAY functions.
• Discerning the nuance involved in making pivot tables present data in tabular form.
• Determining the previous Friday when payroll dates fall on a weekend by using the IF and WEEKDAY functions.
• Calculating a series of semi-monthly dates by way of the IF and EOMONTH worksheet functions.
• Improving the integrity of Excel pivot tables with the Table feature.
• Adding fields to a blank pivot table to create instant reports.
• Redacting portions of Social Security numbers by way of Excel’s TEXT worksheet function.
• Discovering four different ways to remove data from a pivot table report.
• Formatting certain words within a column of text with Conditional Formatting.
• Employing the NETWORKDAYS.INTL worksheet function to determine the number of work days in a period by excluding holidays as well as specific days of the week.
• Drilling down into the details behind any amount within a pivot table with just a double-click.
• Exploring options for recovering lost passwords for Excel spreadsheets.

Overview

• Scrubbing Social Security Numbers

  2 mins
• Flash Fill SSNs (Excel 2013+)

  8 mins
• TEXT function for Social Security Numbers

  14 mins
• SUMPRODUCT Introduction

  22 mins
• Adding Time Values

  26 mins
• Pivot Table Drill Down

  30 mins
• Adding Another Row Field

  35 mins
• EOMONTH Function

  40 mins
• RANDBETWEEN Introduction

  83 mins
• Managing Pivot Table Layouts

  91 mins
• Remove Table Feature from Worksheet

  94 mins
• Recovering Lost Passwords

  99 mins