As someone deeply involved in the world of finance and accounting, I heavily rely on the power and versatility of Microsoft Excel. It’s not just about spreadsheets and endless numbers; it’s about leveraging the right functions to unlock meaningful insights. Through trial and error and countless hours spent analyzing data, I have shortlisted a collection of Excel functions that constantly deliver powerful results.
5 XLOOKUP
VLOOKUP, who?
XLOOKUP is the best lookup function for finance and accounting. It’s more powerful and versatile than VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, and even INDEX/MATCH. If you frequently retrieve and analyze data from various sources and tables, XLOOKUP simplifies these tasks in several ways. It’s one of the Excel functions I wish I knew earlier.
Unlike VLOOKUP (which only looks to the right) and HLOOKUP (which only looks downwards), XLOOKUP can look both to the left and to the right of the lookup column (and upwards and downwards). It also has a built-in argument to specify what should be returned if the lookup value is not found.
Suppose you are a financial analyst responsible for reporting on sales performance across different geographical regions. You have a couple of tables with sales transaction data (transaction ID, product ID, sales date, region code, and sales amount) and region master data (region code, region name, sales target, and currency).
Now, you need to create a summary report that shows Region Name and Sales Target for each sale transaction in your Sales Transaction Data table. You can add two columns, Region Name and Sales Target, and use the following functions.
=XLOOKUP(D2, RegionMaster[Region Code], RegionMaster[Region Name],
Best Excel functions I use for finance planning and accounting
