How to Use Excel to Improve Client and Colleague Communication

1. Introduction

Our current world is inundated with technology. Some of it is useful, and some of it is not. Microsoft Excel has persevered over the past several decades as one of the most versatile, useful, and readily available software. This program is generally thought to be used for accounting and data analysis. While it excels at these functions, the versatility it affords makes it quite adaptable for daily use in equine practice. Excel is extremely useful for doing rapid calculations along the whole spectrum of simple to complex. Equine veterinary practice requires the daily, and often repetitious, use of calculations. This software has proven to be a useful tool in doing many of these calculations as well as providing a quick and accurate method of providing follow up and discharge instructions to clients. A high percentage of equine practitioners are also business owners, which provides an added opportunity for practitioners to use Excel for monitoring financial metrics within an equine practice. This paper speaks to several of the ways that it can be utilized to improve communication to clients and colleagues.

Excel has come to be the most widely used and accepted spreadsheet software on the market today. Because of its popularity, it is an easy way to share files with other users. At the time of writing this paper, Microsoft has developed the website www. onedrive.live.com which allows users to share, edit, and create Excel files. This arrangement gives the opportunity for multiple users to simultaneously view and edit a given document. 

A comprehensive explanation and tutorial on Microsoft Excel is well beyond the scope of this discussion. There are innumerable opportunities and venues elsewhere to learn and understand this software. However, some basic understanding of the program is necessary to consider its use in equine practice. Excel is laid out as individual sheets within a file. When the program is first opened, 3 blank sheets are presented. The tabs labeled Sheet 1, Sheet 2, and Sheet 3 at the bottom of the screen allow the user to toggle between sheets by simply clicking on the tab (Fig. 1). Each sheet is made up of “cells” aligned in vertical columns and horizontal rows. The cells are where data, text, or formulas can be entered. The beauty of Excel is that it is not a program to simply arrange and analyze data. Rather, it is a software program that allows the user to write formulas to tell it what the user would like the program to do. This makes Excel a very versatile program with the ability to adapt and conform to many different uses. Formulas can be entered into any cell by first typing the equals sign “=”. Immediately after the equal sign the user then enters the formula to be applied. For example, if the user would like the cell to fill in today’s date, begin by typing “=TODAY()” (Fig. 2). The cell will then always return the current day’s date. Often when writing a formula the user would desire for the formula to be applied to an entire range of data. For example, if the SUM of a series of numbers is desired, write a formula in the cell in which the user desires for the SUM value to be expressed. In that cell the user will begin by typing “=” followed by “SUM.” The range of values to sum together would then be entered in parenthesis immediately thereafter. Therefore, as shown in Fig. 3, if the user wishes to determine the sum of the range of values in cell B2 through cell B6, the formula would be written “=SUM(B2:B6).” The data to include in the formula can be delimited by a comma, rather than selecting an entire range of data. For example, if the user wishes to determine the average of the values in cells E1, E3, and E6, the formula would be written “=AVERAGE(E1,E3,E6),” as demonstrated in the Fig. 8.
 

Many of the simple math functions can be written without the use of a function. Thus, if the formula “=2+2” is entered into a cell, it will return the value of “4.” Likewise, if the formula “=D2*E2” is put into a cell, it will return a value of the product of multiplying the 2 values in these cells (Fig. 4). This arrangement then allows the user to later change the values in these cells without having to rewrite the formula to see the resulting product. This ability to change values in input cells is key to applying Excel to equine practice. This feature allows the user to write functions and formulas once, and the reported values will change as the input values are changed.
 

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