Pivot tables: a means to quick, accurate trial balances

Technology is valuable when it allows necessary tasks to be done more quickly and accurately. Accountants have benefited from spreadsheet software that has given them the ability to sum thousands of numbers in seconds, link cells, create macros, and perform other tasks. Unfortunately, in many cases,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The CPA journal (1975) 2006-04, Vol.76 (4), p.68
Main Authors: Montondon, Lucille G, Marsh, Treba L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accounting firms
Accounting systems
Classrooms
CPAs
Evaluation
Financial statements
Spreadsheets
Technological change
Technology application
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Technology is valuable when it allows necessary tasks to be done more quickly and accurately. Accountants have benefited from spreadsheet software that has given them the ability to sum thousands of numbers in seconds, link cells, create macros, and perform other tasks. Unfortunately, in many cases, these are nothing more than preparing journal entries in a spreadsheet. Spreadsheet functions are so varied that even experienced users seldom learn the shortcuts for simplifying a task. One example of this is the pivot table function. Pivot tables require them to input the journal entries, but the remaining steps can be done quickly and accurately. In the classroom, this leaves more time for explanations of the effects of the transactions and for analyses of how a transaction affects the financial statements. Beyond the classroom, professionals working with large databases are likely to find pivot tables useful for partitioning and analyzing multiple columns of data.
ISSN:0732-8435