Excel Tips

Calculating statistics for your shelter sometimes requires some Excel magic.  Below is a list of Excel tips, tricks and templates for you to use for the various statistics discussed on this blog.

Calculating Animal Care Days using Excel*

*this tutorial is using Excel 2008 for Mac

Most modern shelter softwares will have built-in reporting functions that may even calculate these stats automatically for you, but it is still useful to know how to do it yourself (Although I have much love for software stock reports, I have found many data errors in them, so I always cross check with my own calculations).

Step 1:

Your data set needs to be in excel (this can be in a .xls or .csv format).  Again, most current softwares will allow you to data dump into these formats if the data do not automatically open already in this format.

   

Step 2:

You can set-up a function in excel to automatically calculate the Animal Care Days column if this is not already done by your software.  First, place your cursor in the cell you want calculated, and go to Insert - Function:

Next, in the formula builder window, select DAYS360:

Double click to expand the function window.  Next, define your start date (in this case, B2) and end date (in this case, C2) and hit enter (return):

The solution to the calculation will then appear in the cell!  To carry that equation through the remainder of the spreadsheet, once again, highlight the cell with the solution in it (in this case, D2).  The bottom right corner of the cell will appear a tiny box and the cursor will turn into a heavy + sign when you hover over it.  Drag that box down for the remainder of the cells to find the solutions for the rest of your spreadsheet!