Posted this on the ICB site... Hopefully someone here can console me too!
I'm feeling incredibly disheartened here so any advise would be greatly appreciated.
I'm in the process of setting up my own practice and came across this book via Ibooks by Dr Peter Marshall called 'Mastering Spreadsheet Bookkeeping' and noticed that it was accredited by the ICB. Result. I've got on very well with his other books regarding bookkeeping and used them for my studies so I was really confident that i'd be able to use this to set up accounts via excel.
It has to be the WORST thing I have ever came across.
For eg;
There's aload of examples at the beginning of the book, showing how the Purchases Day Book, Sales Day Book, Cash Book, A general ledger account ect would look on excel, 1 image shows the appearance of the account and the other shows how it would look with the forumula exposed. However, the image isn't on an excel background so when typing in the formula, you can not see what it is in relation to.
Then there's a separate chapter explaining how to set the workbook up in excel for each ledger account. However it's literally just a list of what to do, again, no step by step guides or screen shots of an excel background so you can see what sums and formula are in relation to and often the results are coming out of 'FALSE' or excel refuses to accept them. So you can't even look at what he has and see if you can tweak it about. I have tried to blindly follow his instructions to see what comes up multiple times but am having absolutely no luck.
So basially you're effectively working blindly. You can see a formula such as =IF(E17>I17,E17-I17) however, you can't see for defianate what figures are actually in E17 or I17 so where on the spreadsheet they would be.
I've spend 5 hours today trying to work how to set up a general ledger account so that it will automatically balance itself and bring/carry down the balance as you're updating it. According to the book it's entirely possible.
It's made me feel like I am completely useless and not up to the task of running my own practice. The book has got so much potential to help a bookkeeper running a small business to avoid paying for software, especially in the early days when you don't have many clients. The delivery is just terrible.
Has anyone else come across this book before and had different results to what I am experiencing? Does anyone know how to do what I am trying to achieve who could possibly help me out?
Feeling so gutted right now.