Forum Discussion
Need help with VBA codes
Well, I'm glad you're open. I'm--long retired--not in the business of consulting on and helping clients create advanced accounting databases and monthly summary reports. I can pretty confidently assure you that you'd be far better served by building a solid database in the background, a database in which you record the individual transactions that constitute the "bunches" of data that lie behind these summary numbers.
As a trivial example of the kind of thing I'm talking about, I have a database that consists of every check written, every income item received, every credit card payment (downloaded from the various banks in every case)....I add budget categories to each line of the database...and then use Excel (Pivot Table, generally) to summarize monthly totals for each budget category. I can (through the magic of the Pivot Table) get instant backup details on any monthly figure in any budget category. How many macros are involved in this workbook? Zero. It's all done with standard, built-in Excel functions. Not to say that macros or VBA routines aren't useful; they are when needed. But they're often not needed, and (potentially) less reliable, if only because less tested, than standard built-in routines.
So I don't know what your budget is to develop this in a different way, and I'd be happy to give a more detailed description of what I'm hinting at, but I think you and your organization would be well served by taking a step back from the monthly summary itself to design a database as the foundation of a more robust monthly reporting system.
- Devon500Sep 21, 2021Copper Contributor
mathetes We do have a GL system which serves as the larger database for global info - capabilities of sorting on the totals that have been spent on one code or another. This sheet really needs to represent only the current request and the summary totals of previous requests. The secondary piece would purely be there so everyone can see we didn't spend more than the agreed upon amount per line item - or to prove that we do have a few dollars left for that line item. Thank you for your input! I will definitely continue brainstorming on how to make this even better