Financial analysis tools

Just pondering the email from CGA expounding on how Excel is such a great financial analysis tool.

I beg to differ. It's not reliable at all. It's necessary to check your work and run proofs to see that the formulas are still working. Sure there are fancy work-arounds to lock things down, but still, every time you use an Excel spreadsheet, it's necessary to get out an old fashioned calculator to test that it's still functioning as it should. What a pain.

I don't know how many times I've caught errors in Excel spreadsheets. The formulas someone thought they could rely on just didn't stand up to scrutiny. That's why I rarely use Excel for financial analysis. It's way too easy to make mistakes. That's just plain embarrassing.

I use QuickBooks and Quicken instead. I'd rather know that every time I run an Investment Income report in Quicken that I have to back out the Return of Capital but know that the rest of the report will add. I'd rather reconcile something I know adds up than check a spreadsheet does what it was supposed to do every time I use it. Then there's the added features where with the click of a mouse I can drill in to see the detail behind the numbers.

The report writer features right in the programs are so incredibly flexible that I almost never export to Excel, in spite of the beefed up features now available to Export and Update with the click of a mouse. I'd love to show you how. Wait a minute, last year I did exactly that for the bookkeepers at IPBC. There's a 5 part series, five hours in total complete with a OneNote file documenting how to create a working paper file using QuickBooks software and OneNote to create the working paper file available for sale on my website.

It's part of a bundle of training products on how to use QuickBooks with tons of tips and tricks on using it for internal controls so you don't get ripped off.

How could you get ripped off? Bookkeepers who add a 1 to the front of every pay cheque and no one checks their work. How could that happen? Lack of segregation of duties (a basic control step) where someone else besides the bookkeeper reconciles the bank account. Lack of reporting consistent and comparable figures probably didn't help either. The Abbotsford Legion bookkeeper is an example, she stole almost $200,000 before she got caught. That's just one example, I could tell you more, but then I'd just be aiding and abetting someone looking for ways to funnel some or all of your hard earned profits into their pockets.

Call or email me if you want to know more.
604-943-7414
eileen@taxdetective.ca