Forum Discussion
Can Excel do this?
You've said it's a school project and you want to know if what you want to create is even possible in Excel. Right?
The answer to that question is "Yes, it is possible."
It probably would take a bit more explanation of what you want to do, but Excel is very good at that kind of thing. So since it's a project for school, have at it. I'll point you in the direction of the many functions that enable one to look things up from a table. And I'd suggest searching (probably on Google) for how those work.... there are in Excel several ways to accomplish it.
Or were you expecting somebody here to do your homework for you?
mathetes Sir, I have managed to create almost my whole table. I only have a problem with Shift H, which starts at 17:00 on Friday and ends at 6:00 on Monday. Could you please provide me with some help with column L? I know I need to add =IF(C2="Friday" then do this, if not, do that, but I can't get it to work.
What you've done is impressive. Instead of giving you the answer, I want to give you a few other pointers.
- First of all, I think you're not entirely correct with your assumption that you need to begin with =IF(C2="Friday" because (if I understand correctly how this is working), the "H" Holiday rate would apply for somebody starting on Saturday or Sunday as well as starting on Friday. So there are more conditions that need to be taken into account in determining whether the hours are paid as "H" hours. So you need to spell those out as well.
- Second, I've pointed you to several functions that might come in handy. You created a table that looks up the name of the day based on dates in September. There's a function that does that automatically, with a lot of variations within it. I've given you a simple example of that. The =WEEKDAY() function returns a number from 1 to 7. You could use those numbers in your formulas rather than the names of the days--it would make the formulas shorter, to some extent. But also, you could do math with them. So if Friday was day 5, Saturday day 6, and so on....your IF statement could simply say =IF(day>=5,.........)
- Third, if you want the name of the day to appear, use =CHOOSE() to turn the number into the name of the day.
- Fourth, in my very first response, I had suggested you look for how Excel can be used to retrieve data from a table. You've chosen to use IF statements for that. I've given you a demonstration of how you can use INDEX and MATCH to get the hourly rates and apply them. I changed the headings of the shift column so as to be able to use the D, E, N, H designations as the reference in MATCH....
So let me turn it back to you now, with those pointers, and see if you can resolve your weekend issue.
mathetes Thank you very, very much. I couldn't get clues like that in Google, that's why I asked you, sir. I will try to implement those functions over the weekend and I'll get back to you when I manage to make it work.
Here's a great website for help with Excel functions. https://exceljet.net/
I recommend also looking at examples on that site for the functions WORKDAYS, VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, as well as the ones I included in my sample.
mathetes Thank you, sir. I have used the functions you provided, as well as I got help from exceljet. In cell Q13 I have created a function which gives H or 0, depending on the number of day from WEEKDAY and hour. I have then created a new sheet with 31 days of this function. Then, for every shift in K, L, M, N I entered IF statement, which depending on the outcome of the function in new sheet either counts the number of hours in each shift or just gives 0,00 and continues.
It works to a point in which two shifts collide with each other. When it is Friday >=17:00 up until Monday <=06:00 it works really good, however, when an employee works for example Monday 04:00 until Monday 12:00 it gives 6hrs in K, 0,08hrs in H, and loses the rest of the time. Did I overdid it to a point where it just simply can't work or is it fixable?
I am really grateful for your help, if I am abusing your free time please just let me know.
Also, it is difficult for me to explain what I did and what I mean because English is not my main language, therefore I am sorry if you can't understand me clearly.