Advance Excel: Are these skills useful?

donfanzu

My father took early redundancy from a big company. In his previous job he would record/manipulate data using MS Excel. He has a flair for it, has taken courses and enjoys creating his own little projects, like expense calculators, score cards for golf, and all his income and tax malarkey.

So now that he's out of a job I'm wondering if those skills are valuable and what particular industries/jobs require them?

This is an example of his work, its a monthly payroll calculator

Nody

Smaller companies would come to mind that would not want/afford big systems to handle it. Common area could be in self employed consultant or accounting support or similar I guess.

helimachoptor

Yeah I think there's definitely a market for it. Most people can do the basics but anything above that is pretty rare I find

Red About Town

Most definitely.

Irish_Elect_Eng

As well as the financial applications, companies that require data analysis also value Excel. But he would need to be good at the advanced features, not just a few nice formulas.

Mrs OBumble

Well yes - but there's lots of potential competition too. And it's important to recognize when things are too big or complicated for Excel.

I believe that http://taxcalc.eu/ started as someone's pet Excel(ish) project. He makes money from advertising now.

beauf

Thats great but its not Advanced Excel. When people are looking for Excel experts they generally mean people with Excel VBA macros/programming and some knowledge of associate systems like databases etc. Possibly also some financial background. However hes obviously interested in it. With an eye for detail. I'd suggest he takes it further by doing some Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) Expert courses in Excel and look into Access and VBA for Office. I think he'd love it, and he'd tick a lot more boxes for potential jobs.

donfanzu

Thanks for all the responses it seems to be pretty encouraging. As far as I know he has a certificate in Advanced Excel and I know that he does indeed write macros to do all the calculations. The monthly expense calculator is something he created for me in a day because I wanted to see how much disposable income I would have in my first job. Some great suggestions there, I'll let him know.

the_syco

donfanzu wrote: »

He has a flair for it, has taken courses and enjoys creating his own little projects, like expense calculators, score cards for golf, and all his income and tax malarkey.

The courses all excel courses, or were any of them specialist accounting and/or banking accreditation courses?

SimonTemplar

I consider myself to be an advanced Excel user for the last four years or so. That attachment is nice and simple but I couldn't consider it to be advanced. It really only uses IF functions. (Don't get me wrong - IFs can be powerful when utilized correctly).

I agree that "advanced Excel" would imply VBA knowledge. To work with VBA correctly, you need to know the fundamental concepts that are relevant to many other programming languages (properties, methods, events, variables, arrays, IF statements, loops, etc...). BTW...your attachment has no macros (formulas are not macros).

If your father doesn't know VBA (or only the basics), I'd suggest he learns it. There are excellent video tutorials on the internet or even from a book. To be honest, most people can learn the syntax to a programming language but applying that syntax to logically solve a problem is an entirely different skill set. From the sound of things, your father gets a kick out of that so VBA learning would be the next best thing to become adept in. It may be challenging but rewarding.

One possible route to take once familiar in VBA is a self-employed consultant aimed at small - medium sized businesses. Most of these SMEs have Excel because it is simply standard for a company to have MS Office. However, I know from personal experience that a lot of companies really only use an Excel spreadsheet as a glorified table without taking advantage of its full capabilities. It's like having a smartphone but only using it for texting. The amount of potential time and money that a SME can save with properly developed Excel solutions can be significant. The problem is that most SMEs don't realize that (1) a problem exists (2) a solution can be developed relatively cheaply using a software package that they already have. After upskilling with VBA, perhaps your father could focus on a particular industry, Google the SMEs in that industry in his locale and try contacting them with offers of the type of service he can provide.

In my own company, I have developed internal VBA Excel solutions that have taken tasks with a duration of a few hours and reduced them to literally a few minutes. That type of saving can be invaluable to companies especially SMEs with limited resources without an internal IT dept or the funds for major bespoke software development.

Max Power1

donfanzu wrote: »

Thanks for all the responses it seems to be pretty encouraging. As far as I know he has a certificate in Advanced Excel and I know that he does indeed write macros to do all the calculations. The monthly expense calculator is something he created for me in a day because I wanted to see how much disposable income I would have in my first job. Some great suggestions there, I'll let him know.

As mentioned, this is a common misconception.

From someone who uses VBA (and some other automation programs/languages) on a daily basis, advanced excel only begins once you have mastered at least the basics of VBA.

Its something you either love or hate - and few people love! (But I am one of those weirdos)

ABajaninCork

Max Power1 wrote: »

As mentioned, this is a common misconception.

From someone who uses VBA (and some other automation programs/languages) on a daily basis, advanced excel only begins once you have mastered at least the basics of VBA.

Its something you either love or hate - and few people love! (But I am one of those weirdos)

I can do it (but could do with some brushing up!) and I HATE it!! Not my cup of tea at all, but I figured it was something to learn...