How to Figure out what Lighting Gear to Buy/Sell using Excel
While our rental software is pretty robust and can export some great reports out of it, it’s really just a lot of numbers that requires a trained eye to go through it and draw conclusions from the data. I also got so tired of just going with my gut, I wanted to know what to buy based on the data, so I set out to create something that anyone could copy/paste our report in from RentalWorks and immediately know what they should look into in terms of buying and selling our rental equipment. We made this short video to show you how we did it.
Keep in mind we did not use much real data here, don’t try and draw any conclusions from what you see, it’s not real yet!
Helpful Functions
Excel is a super powerful tool that can be used for so many applications, but it isn’t until you learn some of the different functions and formulas do you start to think about what you can do with it. I’ve found ExcelJet.Net to be an excellent resource, even still when using google sheets. The main functions I found myself using were.
=Vlookup
VLOOKUP is an Excel function to lookup and retrieve data from a specific column in table. VLOOKUP supports approximate and exact matching, and wildcards (* ?) for partial matches. The “V” stands for “vertical”. Lookup values must appear in the first column of the table, with lookup columns to the right.
Index and Match
The Excel INDEX function returns the value at a given position in a range. You can use index to retrieve individual values or entire rows and columns. INDEX is often used with the MATCH function, in my example we used it to find a name of something, and then output the price which was a few columns away.
Conditional Formatting
You can think of conditional formatting as automatic formatting that is triggered by conditions that you define. For example, you can use conditional formatting to automatically change the color of cells that contain values greater than or less certain values. Conditional formatting is a great way to visually highlight important information in a worksheet.
That’s it! If you’re interested in excel it’s so easy to learn because there’s so many great resources out there. Here’s my list of go-to websites:
https://www.reddit.com/r/googlesheets
As always, just type your question into google with “excel” and most of the time there is someone out there who has done what you’re trying to do.