11 Excel shortcuts that make it easier to budget by Caroline Banton on Oct 13, 2015, 10:00 AM Advertisement
 Excel is a powerhouse in the business world, but the software also offers tremendous benefits for individuals in need of budgeting help. From playing with your stock options to planning for taxes, there are dozens of ways in which people can use Excel to their advantage, provided they understand the program's tools and tricks. Below are 11 Excel shortcuts that make budgeting easy while saving you valuable time each month. Related: How Creating a Budget Can Improve Your Credit Score SEE ALSO: Here's the budgeting strategy of a family who lived comfortably on $14,000 a year  1. AutoSum AutoSum is a basic function in Excel that saves significant time when adding or subtracting numbers. When creating a budget, AutoSum can be incredibly helpful for adding items like monthly expenses or different income components quickly. To sum a column of numbers, select the cell immediately below the last number in the column and click the AutoSum button found at Home > AutoSum, and Formulas > AutoSum. Do the same for rows. Once entered into a cell, the formula can be easily copied to others and will sum the information depending on the new location. For example, if an AutoSum function in B3 adds the cells in B1 and B2, when the formula is moved to cell C3, the cells C1 and C2 will be summed, and the result will appear in cell C3. Check out this ExcelCentral.com video to see the AutoSum feature in action.
2. The '$' sign When creating a budget, the "$" shortcut is incredibly helpful for adding items like monthly expenses or different income components. The "$" symbol is a quick fix for anchoring a cell reference. Typically, when an Excel formula is copied from one cell to another, the references change depending on the formula cell location. The dollar sign allows you to fix the row, the column or both on any cell reference by preceding the column or row with the dollar sign. Hence, the row or column won’t change when copied. When a formula contains an absolute reference, no matter which cell the formula occupies, the cell reference will not change. If you copy or move the formula, it refers to the same cell as it did in its original location. For example, if the cell A1 is in a formula, that cell might change to A2 if the formula is copied to an adjacent cell. If "$A$1″ is used instead, wherever the formula is copied or moved, it always refers to cell A1. See the "$" tool in action in the video below: Youtube Embed:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/cBcDnHu9zQw
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Height: 315px For budgets, the "$" saves the user from typing a variable — such as an hourly wage rate or interest rate — into every cell to which it applies. For example, you might want to list the hours of various workers and then multiply them by a set hourly rate to find the employees’ total wages. Instead of typing in the wage rate for each worker in each function, you can use the dollar sign. Excel will then automatically use the wage rate from the cell indicated.
3. Insert multiple rows or columns Whether you’re preparing budgets — or simply entering large amounts of data into a spreadsheet — inserting rows or columns can be time-consuming if the user simply right clicks and then selects "insert row.” Fortunately, Excel offers a shortcut that allows the user to insert as many rows as desired quickly. First, right-click on the row before which you want to add new rows. Then click insert and use the mouse to drag over the number of rows you want to insert. You should see a pop-up appear showing "R” and the number of rows you are inserting, for example, "R4.” Right-click on a row and click "insert” in the pop-up menu. Blank rows should appear above the row that you originally selected. Watch this video to see the steps utilized to insert multiple rows.
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