Entering Formulas

Take a look at the following spreadsheet

This is a typical spreadsheet for a company's budget. Once the sales and expenses for the quarter are established, we can program the spreadsheet to add up both revenue and expenses. After that, the computer can give us the information we need regarding our net profit for the quarter. When typing the formulas, it is possible, for example, to place a formula such as 22000 + 17500 in cell C7 and come up with the correct answer. But what if the revenue information changes? Will the formula update?

To guarantee that formulas will always reflect the most updated information, you should use the cell addresses rather than the values in the cells. This will allow the spreadsheet to keep any formulas accurate as the values change.

In order to indicate to the computer that you are typing a formula or function, you should always preclude your formula with an equals sign. (=) The formula that would go into cell C7 would be:

=C5 + C6

This will put the value 39,500 in cell C7. When writing the formula, you can type everything in, or type the =, click on cell C5, type the +, and click on cell C6.

To complete the formulas for January, we must add up the expenses, then determine the net profit by subtracting the Total Expenses from the Total Sales. The formulas for each of these are:

Cell C14: =C10+C11+C12+C13

This will give Total Expenses of 36700.

Cell C16: =C14-C7

Our Net Profit is 2800. This is what the spreadsheet should look like now: