Excel Principles

In December, there were some conversations in LinkedIn about Excel and what best practices should be. That was the first time I learned about Excel Principles being promulgated by a British and Wales Accounting Group in Europe. I’m not sure the US has a similar set of principles other than maybe Sarbanes Oxley’s financial rules, so it was interesting to read what those principles are.

A lot of the principles are best practices for creating corporate wide or department wide Excel spreadsheets for general use. The spreadsheets that I create tend to be for my own individual use at a particular desk although I have created some tools for my teams that I work with. Some of my “best practices” do follow some of Principles somewhat like the European Accounting Group advises, but I might have a twist since I have developed my own practices over the years before any group decided to spell out what the “best practices” are.

Here’s my slide that I posted on LinkedIn on the subject of Excel debacles, Excel principles and my own approach: