Useful Excel Commands

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Excel is an extremely powerful and versatile software with lots of functions which we can use as commands for solving our financial and mathematical problems. Whether you want to calculate interest rate, loan payment, depreciation amount, return the current hours, average, range, excel can do it all and even more.

Following are some useful excel commands

1. Basic Mathematical Commands

With excel, you can do basic mathematical calculations like add, substract, multiply, and divide. Except this, you can count numbers. Remember, A is the first column of excel sheet and 1 is first row. So, A1 is first column's first row. B1 is of second column and first first row's the number.

for sum, =A1+B1

for subtract =A1-B1

for multiply =A1*B1

for division =A1/B1

2. Basic Financial Commands

Excel has more than 50 commands for financial functions. Some of them is follow.

(A) FV {Future return}

Return on the future value of an investment based on periodic, constant payments and a constant interest rate.

=FV(rate;nper;pmt;pv;type)

(B) Nper

Return the number of periods for an investment based on periodic, constant payments and a constant interest rate.

= NPER(rate;pmt;pv;fv;type)

= PMT( rate, nper, pv, [fv], [type] )

(D) PV

PV, one of the financial functions, calculates the present value of a loan or an investment, based on a constant interest rate. You can use PV with either periodic, constant payments (such as a mortgage or other loan), or a future value that's your investment goal.

= PV( rate, nper, pmt, [fv], [type] )

(E) Rate

The Excel Rate function calculates the interest rate required to pay off a specified amount of a loan, or to reach a target amount on an investment, over a given period.

= PV( rate, nper, pmt, [fv], [type] )

(F) NPV

RATE(nper, pmt, pv, [fv], [type], [guess])