3 Reasons to Use Excel for Your SMB

Your business has a lot of technology at its fingertips, but how effectively are you using it? Chances are some of your tools might have more practical uses than you might expect. One such tool is Microsoft Excel, Microsoft 365’s spreadsheet building platform. Here are three ways you can use Excel for your SMB that you might not have thought about.

Streamlining Financial Management

When you use Excel, you can make budgeting, expense tracking, and invoicing significantly easier.

With real-time visibility into your cash flow, you can make better (and faster) financial decisions. This will help you create more detailed budgets, track expenses as they occur, and create professional invoices with automated calculations. What’s more, since your spreadsheets are always backed up and available in the cloud, you won’t have to worry about this important information disappearing overnight, and it’ll be easier than ever to collaborate as needed.

Yes, a dedicated accounting software solution will likely make for an easier and more efficient way of managing your money, but Excel’s spreadsheets can be quite robust when set up properly for this purpose.

Empowering Data-Driven Decision Making

Half the challenge of business is having to make tough decisions, and the other half is making the right decisions, which is where Excel comes in.

You want to ensure all your decisions are as data-driven as possible. Excel helps your business work toward this goal by helping you collect, organize, and analyze data, all of which contributes to discovering insights you can use to push your business forward. Some examples include tracking sales performance, analyzing customer demographics, monitoring inventory levels, or even creating dynamic dashboards that can help you visualize key metrics.

Excel gives your team the ability to access real-time data for more effective strategizing, identifying trends, and optimizing operations for maximum impact.

Enhancing Productivity with Integrations

Excel spreadsheet files are extremely useful for use with your other business software, like your customer relationship management tool, marketing automation software, and even your accounting software.

Most of these tools allow your business to import an Excel file with the relevant data to make data entry significantly easier. This also reduces the risk of user error from doing the work manually. What’s more, if your solutions are connected to the cloud, you’ll have an easier time sharing files, integrating data with project management tools, and so much more.

Excel is a crucial tool for any business owner that wants to make every other part of business more efficient.

Of course, Excel is only one part of Microsoft 365, and there are plenty of other tools available in the productivity suite that can dramatically improve your business’ performance. To learn more about these tools and find out how we can support your SMB’s efforts, give us a call at (402) 514-3200.