Because it was launched in 1985, Microsoft’s Excel has grow to be the go-to spreadsheet program amongst monetary professionals—and, definitely, it stays a robust software. There are loads of causes why it’s retained its reputation for many years. However the rise in cloud computing, particularly for the reason that starting of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the exponential development of the quantity of information companies accumulate have modified the best way we work, presumably without end.
In the present day’s collaborative, cloud-based enterprise surroundings is the place the benefits of Google Sheets actually stand out. Nonetheless, there are numerous finance and enterprise professionals who’re nonetheless working with Excel spreadsheets in the identical manner that many people realized within the precloud period, even those that have switched to Microsoft’s cloud-based Microsoft 365.
In 2016, the commercial equipment manufacturing firm the place I oversee monetary information analytics took the numerous step of transferring all of its 11,000 staff to Google’s G Suite, now Google Workspace—becoming a member of the rising variety of corporations making the swap from Excel. Consequently, I’ve been utilizing Google Sheets virtually each day since then, turning into a self-taught professional in its performance and modern methods of working. I’ve used Google Sheets to construct discounted cash-flow fashions for big acquisitions, to handle advanced integration initiatives, for monetary planning and evaluation, and, fairly often, as a alternative for a whiteboard once I wish to sketch one thing in a web based assembly.
On this article, I share a few of the benefits of Google Sheets, highlighting the options which have dramatically improved my productiveness. I additionally present an introduction to Google Apps Script, a robust software for automating workflows and lengthening Google Sheets’ performance.
I don’t, nevertheless, present a head-to-head characteristic matchup of Excel versus Google Sheets; functionalities change so shortly that such an evaluation would grow to be out of date inside weeks. As a substitute, I give attention to Google Sheets’ benefits and the brand new methods of working that the emergence of on-line productiveness instruments have enabled. I additionally contact on a few of the detrimental facets of creating the shift from Microsoft.
The Benefits of Google Sheets
The primary benefits Google Sheets has over Excel are seamless collaborative performance, the power to deal with extraordinarily massive initiatives and information units by means of its integration with BigQuery, and the automation alternatives accessible by means of Google Apps Script. Whereas Excel and others additionally provide these capabilities, Google has made them so intuitive and end-user-friendly that even probably the most change-averse finance professionals can shortly rise up to hurry and begin seeing tangible advantages.
Simple Collaboration
Probably the most speedy benefit of utilizing Sheets is the means to collaborate seamlessly. Within the previous model of working, you’d use a grasp file that somebody needed to “personal,” which was (in a finest case situation) saved in a shared community folder or painstakingly emailed forwards and backwards amongst customers.
In distinction, Sheets incorporates a number of modes of collaborating, starting from the asynchronous—when collaborators work independently and largely at completely different instances, in the identical file—to real-time simultaneous collaborative modifying. With asynchronous modifying, you should use the remark characteristic to alert folks to questions or considerations and assign them duties that they will mark full once they end them.
Good chips put fast data on the person’s fingertips with out their having to click on out of the doc. For instance, folks chips establish the individual answerable for particular duties and supply a hyperlink to their contact data, whereas file and calendar occasion chips put context and extra supplies at hand. Mixed with the timeline view characteristic, which permits customers to visualize time-associated information, sensible chips make Sheets a wonderful hub not just for monetary evaluation but in addition as a hub for actions and knowledge, together with all facets of initiatives.
Enhancing a spreadsheet reside with different colleagues is a robust manner of working. The productiveness of two or three people who find themselves all extremely expert with Google Sheets shortly constructing out a monetary or working mannequin collectively in actual time is a outstanding sight in comparison with the previous manner of working. The a number of cursors in numerous colours, transferring throughout the display on the similar time to construct a mannequin, look virtually like a time-lapse video of a portray being created.
There’s additionally room for several types of contributors. Not everybody wants to have the ability to edit a spreadsheet, for instance. View- and comment-only choices keep safety and information integrity whereas granting visibility to those that want it.
Constructed-in Model Management
Should you’ve ever had the painful expertise of a spreadsheet crash past restoration that ends in hours of misplaced work, you might need developed the behavior of saving recordsdata ceaselessly. That is effective—if cumbersome—for one individual working alone, however when a number of variations of a file start to flow into amongst colleagues and somebody forgets to replace the file identify, chaos can ensue.
Google Workspace makes it potential to have only one file all through the lifetime of the mission, because of its built-in model monitoring. Accessible by means of “See model historical past” within the menu, this characteristic permits you to see all edits made to a doc by means of a useful timeline. It additionally contains the identify of the one that made every change. Each alteration is saved and you’ll “rewind” to any earlier level within the file’s life, again to when it was first created. Not solely that, however for any particular person cell, you possibly can choose “Present edit historical past” and click on again by means of every edit to see who modified it, when, and to which worth.
This characteristic is offered to each Google Workspace person. Microsoft customers will want both SharePoint or OneDrive to entry model historical past for Excel.
Working at Scale
One of many misconceptions my colleagues and I had once we adopted Sheets was that it will be effective for small calculations—roughly like a complicated calculator—however not helpful for bigger fashions or information units. However because it seems, Google Sheets is simply as highly effective as a desktop utility. As I reveal under, Google Sheets can capably deal with massive monetary fashions, and it may well connect with Google BigQuery to research large information units.
For instance, whenever you’re engaged on an M&A mission, one of many many paperwork you’re more likely to want is a monetary mannequin to gather all of the related historic monetary information and varied forward-looking situations primarily based on drivers. Should you typically work on M&A, then you probably have a tendency to begin from a template that accommodates every part you want, comparable to standardized monetary statements, valuation calculations, and so on. The present doc then grows over the course of the mission to include monetary and tax due diligence changes into the historic financials, utilizing industrial/market due diligence to help the varied situations for monetary projections.
Over the course of a number of months, the file can develop to dozens of tabs with a posh internet of hyperlinks between them. Sheets not solely handles the massive quantity of interconnected information effectively however, because of its model historical past characteristic, you’ll by no means once more yell “Who modified the low cost charge?!” when your valuation mannequin output is unexpectedly off.
Analyzing Very Giant Information Units
As I discussed, Google Sheets connects to Google BigQuery, Google Cloud’s information warehouse and analytics engine, which lets you analyze large information units straight in Sheets. BigQuery can home your whole group’s information and make it accessible for analytics use, whether or not for evaluation by area specialists comparable to finance professionals or for superior machine studying use instances led by an information science staff.
To reveal the ability of this course of, I as soon as used the next instance in a Sheets coaching session at work:
- From inside Sheets, I related to one of many public information units in BigQuery: Chicago taxi journeys. On the time, this contained 195 million rows of information.
- Then I created a pivot desk from the complete information, with the time of day and day of week on the 2 axes, and the variety of journeys as values.
- Lastly, I utilized conditional formatting, comparable to utilizing pink to signify peak hours, to make the patterns stand out extra clearly.
All the course of took lower than two minutes.
Except you’re within the taxi enterprise, this explicit information evaluation is probably not very helpful, however it reveals how shortly you possibly can analyze massive information units utilizing the mix of BigQuery and Sheets to successfully acquire and talk insights.
To supply one other instance of Sheets pivot desk utilization, a finance skilled would possibly want to tug information from completely different methods into one evaluation—maybe one consolidation system holds higher-level information that must be reconciled towards a number of detailed information sources. If your organization makes the info accessible by means of BigQuery, you possibly can, with just some clicks, hyperlink every information supply into one spreadsheet and put the related views subsequent to one another. You’ll be able to then shortly carry out typical spreadsheet calculations proper subsequent to—and utilizing information from—your BigQuery-powered pivot tables or extracts.
You can too create charts and formulation utilizing information from BigQuery information units. In case you have your whole monetary information in BigQuery, you possibly can develop analyses and reviews in a short time.
Connecting to Exterior Information Sources
With the ability to pull information right into a spreadsheet so to work with it’s a basic want for monetary professionals. Google Sheets presents quite a few built-in formulation that do that, such because the Googlefinance system, which helps you to pull information straight from Google Finance. Though not akin to an expert service comparable to Bloomberg, it’s nonetheless a wonderful software for acquiring public inventory and foreign money data, like these closing bell costs for Alphabet inventory in January 2018:
There are additionally different, extra basic methods to get information from the online. The performance to extract an HTML desk or checklist straight from a web site can, for instance, be helpful with monetary, market, or different publicly accessible data that you simply wish to retrieve and work with.
Connecting to the Total Google Workspace
Google Apps Script is a robust software that opens virtually limitless prospects not solely to increase and automate workflows in Sheets, but in addition to attach it with different components of Google Workspace. This automation software seamlessly connects Sheets, Drive, and BigQuery operations into one workflow. I’ve quite a few examples at work the place we have now used Apps Script to create numerous copies of a template reporting spreadsheet, robotically downloaded completely different monetary data from BigQuery into every of them, after which shared every model with completely different folks. This ensured that varied groups may see solely their very own delicate information, like prices.
Does Google Sheets Have Any Disadvantages?
I’ve been evangelizing Google Sheets. Nonetheless, not everyone seems to be offered on its advantages but. And I believe that’s due to one among Sheets’ drawbacks: A lot of its advantages depend upon collaboration with others, and also you’ll discover that uneven adoption in your group will place limits on how briskly you possibly can take full benefit of a few of the options.
Additionally, Google Sheets, like every software program, can have its small annoyances, comparable to a keyboard shortcut or two that aren’t what you’ll count on or a characteristic that’s lacking or doesn’t behave the best way you need. In lots of instances, although, these annoyances are primarily an issue for customers nonetheless habituated to Excel quite than a practical weak spot of Google Sheets.
One other drawback is that Excel’s success depends on its ecosystem of plugins, a lot of which aren’t (but) accessible for Google Sheets. Which means that for those who can’t replicate what you want with Google Apps Script, utilizing Sheets means chances are you’ll have to toggle between each purposes.
Enhanced Collaboration Wins Out
Spreadsheets are one of the vital essential instruments, if not the most essential software, for a lot of finance and enterprise professionals. They’re our canvases, our notepads, and our devices. Over the course of our careers, we spend hundreds of hours utilizing them. We’d like our experiences with them to be nice and environment friendly.
I’ve seen large productiveness advantages from the collaboration options and different improvements that include utilizing web-based productiveness purposes like Google Sheets as in comparison with their conventional desktop counterparts. Cloud-based Microsoft 365 has grow to be extra sturdy in recent times, however its collaborative performance nonetheless has not fully caught up to at present’s calls for.
There are additionally immense productivity-enhancing advantages from studying to make use of these instruments past the elementary degree, as I hope I’ve demonstrated. With tendencies comparable to elevated distant collaboration and the necessity to analyze ever-larger information units persevering with, discovering the functionalities that be just right for you is essential, and the enterprise case for evaluating Google Sheets retains getting stronger.
This text has just lately undergone a complete replace to include the most recent and most correct data. Feedback under could predate these modifications.
