16 May2011
Written by Dustin Wheeler, CPA. Posted in Google Docs, Tech Tips
Recently, I had one of those “how did you do that?” moments with a tech-savvy client. This client, like me, set up his domain with Google Apps. During a meeting, he told me he wanted to show me a spreadsheet he created in Google Docs. In the web browser, he typed d.(his domain).com and the browser opened his Google Docs login page. Not long after that, as we were scheduling our next meeting, he typed c.(his domain).com in the browser, and his Google Calendar instantly appeared. I could not help but look with amazement and say “wow, that was fast! – how did you do that?”
I love finding faster and more efficient ways of doing things, so I also set up my domain this way for the quickest access to Google Apps. Like many of Google’s products, I found it was incredibly easy to set up.
- Go to your Google Apps domain management page and click on settings. Click on the product to the left that you want to change the URL for (Docs is shown below).
- Click on the “Change URL” link which will take you to the page you see below. Click on the second button and change the subdomain to whatever you like. My client prefers the one letter subdomains, for example, “d” for Docs and “c” for Calendar.
- I then had to go to my domain host’s DNS Management page and add a CNAME. Google has step-by-step instructions for this.
In a prior post, I wrote about how I set up a Gmail address with my domain. I also have a short URL for my e-mail. By typing mail.dustinwheelercpa.com, I go straight to my e-mail page.
17 May2010
Written by Dustin Wheeler, CPA. Posted in Google Docs, Tech Tips
Today I was experimenting with Google Docs and discovered something really cool that I want to share. I created the chart below titled “Cash Contributed to Partnership” from a simple spreadsheet. The chart is not a static image. The data in the chart is linked to the spreadsheet stored in my Google Docs account. When I change the numbers on the spreadsheet, the chart in this blog post updates automatically.
(disclaimer – the data in the chart is entirely fictional and any similarity to a real-life situtation is purely coincidental – also, this chart may not show in RSS feed readers, so please view this post on my blog website)
This is how I created and published the chart:
1. I created a new spreadsheet in Google Docs, and entered the data shown below.
2. On the top menu, I clicked on insert, then gadget. In the finance category, I selected the “pile” chart that shows stacks of $100 bills of varying sizes based on the values in the spreadsheet.
3. The box you see below appeared. I selected the data range (which must include both the names and amounts) and entered a gadget title and chart header. Then, I clicked on the little arrow in the top right corner and clicked on Publish Gadget.
4. The box below then appeared with a script code that can be inserted into an HTML page. I copied the code below and pasted it into the top of this blog post.
I noticed that when I changed the values in the spreadsheet, it did not change the chart in my blog post immediately. Sometimes, it took a couple of minutes.
Do you have any questions or ideas to share? Please leave a comment below.
04 Jan2010
Written by Dustin Wheeler, CPA. Posted in Excel, Tech Tips
Need a loan amortization schedule? There’s a template for that.
Creating a personal monthly budget? There’s a template for that.
Is one of your kids getting married and you’re planning out the expenses? There’s a template for that.
Okay, you get the point and you’re not amused with my not-funny “there’s an app for that” parody, so I’ll stop there.
Friends have sometimes asked me to help them create spreadsheets for all of the above purposes, perhaps unaware of the many templates that exist for Microsoft Excel. Sure, there are some complex customized spreadsheets you should ask a CPA for help with, but for common and simple stuff, you could use a template for free. There are tons of them.
To view a list of templates available in Excel, click on the Office Button on the upper-left corner of the Excel window, then click on New. You might only see a few under Installed Templates, but there are many more you can download from Microsoft Office Online (you’ll see a disclaimer from Microsoft saying that these templates were supplied by members of the Microsoft Office Online community, and Microsoft does not promise that the templates will work for your purposes or be free from viruses and defects).
The most common spreadsheet I am asked to produce is a loan amortization schedule. Excel has a template for this that I am particularly impressed with. All you have to do is enter values such as the loan amount and interest rate in the orange colored cells and the table magically appears. Change one of the values, and the table revises itself immediately. The template is also capable of handling extra principal payments, either regular or occasional, and adjusting for the total number of payments automatically.
If you only want to only use Excel and not any other accounting software, you can download templates for check registers, general ledgers, invoices, sales receipts, balance sheets, and income statements. Doing bookkeeping in Excel doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to me and I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, but using these templates is certainly easier than trying to do it from scratch.
You’ll also find several templates that are helpful for tax purposes, such as a mileage log and business travel expense log. Use these templates to organize your information, and your tax preparer will be impressed.
What if you can’t find the template you want on Microsoft Office Online? You might be able to find it among the thousands of templates from Google Docs (Google’s free suite of online productivity software which includes a spreadsheet program similar to Excel). If you’d rather use Excel, you can create the spreadsheet in Google Docs with the template and then save it as an Excel file. I have done this with a few Google Docs templates, and they work perfectly in Excel.
The next time you need to create a spreadsheet, just remember, there might be a template for that.