Peachtree Toolbox: 2010 New Release

It’s one of my favorite times of the year, new release time!  Peachtree is getting ready to release the 2010 version of their programs.  It seems that every year there are some new enhancements added to the programs that in most cases make them easier to use.  I thought I would spend some time outlining the new features and posting on them.

 

One of the key things that Sage worked on with their Peachtree programs for this year is the speeding up of transaction, look up, and reporting.  One feature that really caught my eye was being able to open multiple companies at the same time.  As an accountant who may be working on multiple companies this is an invaluable tool.  The customizable dashboard is wonderful.  I tend to use the dropdowns, but if I could put all my favorites in one place, I will do it.

 

The list below is the new and enhanced features available on Peachtree 2010 and Quantum 2010.  Quantum is designed for a larger amount of users, thus is comes with more features.  You can get further information on www.peachtree.com.

 

Peachtree by Sage 2010 – Release Overview

 

Transaction History

 

þ     Easily and quickly view all history related to a particular customer or vendor transaction throughout the entire chain of events at any point in the sales or purchase process.

þ     View forward from a quote to a receipt or backwards from a payment to a purchase order.

þ     Save time getting to the information you need to take action!

 

Customer Management Center

 

þ     Save time by viewing the details you need all-in-one-place to better manage and service your customers without missing a beat.

þ     Create a customizable dashboard view of your customer’s information such as their converted and unconverted quotes, invoices, receipts, time tickets, aged balances, items sold, and much more. Drill down to the detail and quickly take action.

þ     Save time by looking up customers quickly based on their id, phone number or any of their contact information or recently looked up customers, and filter further based on date ranges.

þ     Utilize the Recent Selections link to quickly pull up customers who you have already viewed.

þ     Easily export customer information to Excel® or PDF or launch an e-mail from the Customer Management Center.

 

Open Multiple Companies

 

þ     Get your work done faster by being able to open multiple companies within Peachtree at the same time!

þ     Open all of your companies at the same and toggle to the company you need without closing your current company.

þ     Save time by not having to reenter your login information when switching between companies. Enter your user id & password once and Peachtree will remember it until you close Peachtree.

 

Multiple Contacts

 

þ     Store a virtually unlimited number of contacts per company in Peachtree!

þ     The new “Contacts” tab in the Customers screen allows you to keep track of any specific details you want regarding multiple contacts per company.

þ     Track more details like multiple contacts titles, phone numbers, e-mail address and specify the bill-to and ship-to contacts.

þ     A new Notes field allows you to track unique information about each contact.

 

Automatic Backup

 

þ     Automate your backup process for any time that is convenient for you and your company! No more hassles or worries about the safety and security of your data.

þ     With Peachtree Automatic Backup, set up your schedule once, and the rest is taken care of for you. Peachtree doesn’t even have to be running to make the scheduled backup.

þ     Notify users to log out, or automatically log them off in order to run your backup.

 

(PeachtreeQuantum only)

 

Employee Management

 

þ     Save time and reduce errors by keeping track of all your employees’ information in one place!

þ     Store additional employee data within Peachtree such as emergency contact, performance reviews, employment details like hiring date and I-9 verification, additional phone numbers, and much more.

þ     Easily stay on top of your employees’ records by receiving alerts and reminders for key tasks coming up such as review dates.

 

Business Analytics powered by iLumen

 

þ     See how your company is performing compared to other companies with the new customizable company dashboard!

þ     Get instant access to view up-to-date key financial trends in order to compare items such as Total Revenue, Gross Margin %, Days Sales Outstanding, and much more.

þ     Use this tool to help improve your business’ financial health and make critical decisions.

 

Inventory Management

 

þ     Save time looking up items with the ability to search on inventory information in the Description for Sales, Description for Purchases, or the Item Note fields.

þ     See what your customers are buying with the new Item Sales History by Customer onscreen view and report.

þ     Streamline your data entry when setting up new items with the ability to set the Item Class default based on your most common inventory type such as Stock, Non-Stock, Service, etc.

 

Password Security

 

þ     Secure your company’s data from unauthorized access with increased password security options.

þ     Strengthen your password security with new customizable options such as automatic password expiration, multiple incorrect password attempts lockout, no repeat passwords, and masking passwords from other users in Peachtree.

þ     Maintenance is easier giving users the ability to change their own passwords without relying on the admin, and requiring strong password compliance.

 

Peachtree Resource Center

 

þ     We know you need more than just Peachtree to run your business. That’s why we have a variety of products and services that can help meet your needs.

þ     You’ll find a full list of Peachtree services, training courses, marketing tools, and much more readily available as your business needs evolve.

þ     Get easy access to the latest news, product tips, white papers, knowledgebase articles, and other free resources to help you run your business more effectively.

þ     No need to look around – just reference the Peachtree Resource Center for all your business needs.

 

In-Product Advisor

 

þ     Learn the best way to work within Peachtree by leveraging our in-product user tips. These tips will help you discover functions or features that will assist you in learning other areas of the product quicker.

þ     The Advisor will assist you in pointing out better ways to accomplish common tasks in the program, in areas such as Sales/Invoicing, Inventory, Vendors, Receipts, and General Journal Entries.

þ     And you can set your experience with Peachtree to maximize the effectiveness of assistance you might require, as well as set the length of time that each message will be displayed.

 

Peachtree Quantum – My Dashboard

 

þ     Everyone is unique in how they work in Peachtree. Now every user can create their own personalized dashboard to help them clean up the clutter and only focus on what they need to.

þ     Customize the screens to only show things you do on a regular basis like managing Aged Receivables, or Aged Payables, or Payroll and much more. Mix and match from various functions in Peachtree. Or make another view that shows only the tasks you need on a weekly or monthly basis – you choose!

þ     However you create your tabs, you will have the ability to customize the individual areas and filter data based on how you need to track it. And security is assured so that only available modules are shown based on the user’s security level.

 

Peachtree Quantum – Order Process Workflow

 

þ     Improve daily efficiency of your business with the new Order Process Workflow system in Peachtree Quantum.

þ     Keep track of all the moving parts of your order process so nothing gets missed and everything moves along as planned.

þ     Notify the next person in the process, with a status and specific notes as needed.

þ     Have one centralized place to keep track of all process statuses, or just your own tasks.

þ     Automatically send notifications to designated employees/customers/vendors once a task is completed.

 

Peachtree Quantum – Multi-User Management

 

þ     Now a better way to manage users in Peachtree!

þ     Send notifications to other users that they need to log out, or if necessary, manually log them out of the company.

 

 

If you are interested in learning more about Peachtree or have accounting or software needs I can help!  Sorry, I am limited to South Eastern Wisconsin, but if you are in need I can be contacted at dchermak@yahoo.com, I will give you further information from there.  Or you can use the link on the sidebar to contact me.

Peachtree Toolbox: Backing up your Data

I finally have an opportunity to start sharing with you the things I have learned about Peachtree and QuickBooks.  I will mainly concentrate on Peachtree since QuickBooks does a great job of providing free information to its users.  Peachtree does an adequate job, however, it seems that there is not as much free information out there from other locations.  Today I am going to talk about backing up your data.  It may seem trivial, but I do get a ton of questions on this topic from day to day.

When you have completed what you wanted to complete in your company, you can make a back up for yourself, or to be forwarded to your accountant for further work.  Providing your accountant uses Peachtree to echo your work.

 To save a back up:

Select File

Select Back Up Ctrl+B

You will get a pop up box.

 

 You can backup online if you wish, however, you pay for that service.  Most people and accountants prefer to back up to a disk, Flash Drive, or a separate hard drive.

 I prefer to have the company name in the backup file name.  You do not need to include archives in the back up-it only makes the file bigger.

 There is also a reminder to remind you to back up at a selected frequency.  I have it turned off here, however, if you are pretty busy it’s hard to remember to back up, so the reminder is a great way to keep track of you back up schedule and keep you on track.

 At this point click back up.

 You will get the save box.  Obviously if you have ever saved anything you know that you can select where you want to save the file.  Use the “Save In” selection to save the location of the file you wish to save in.  For a disk, select the drive, for a flash select the flash location.  You can even select your desktop to save the file if you wish.  You can e-mail the file to your accountant if you wish, so note the location of where you saved the file so you can attach it later.

 

When you have selected the location of where you want to save the file. Click Save. You may get the message below if you did not select a hard drive location.  Peachtree has not updated its backup function to recognize that most of us no longer use 3 ½ in floppy disks.  So, if you don’t use a hard drive location it thinks you are going to use the floppy disk and it will divide the file out if it is too large.  If you get a message that the file requires more than one disk then you need to cancel and save to your hard drive.  Then copy the file from that location to your flash or CD.  My message would not prompt a need to do anything special, so I will just save.

 

 

The file will just back up.  If there are no issues. You will return to your Peachtree screen.  Congratulations! You just made a back up!

If you want to e-mail the file, simply open an e-mail, address it, add any message you want, and attach the file to your e-mail.  Keep in mind that most e-mail services only allow 10KB to be sent on attachments, anything larger than that will need to be put into a Zip file, or you will need to try a service that allows larger files to be sent.

Some accountants even have a way for you to sign in to their system and upload the file if you wish.

If you like what you see here and are in the Milwaukee or South-Eastern part of Wisconsin? I am available and am willing to work with your company on QuickBooks and Peachtree as well as meet your Accounting needs. 

Feel free to e-mail me at davidchermak@gmail.com.  I will be happy to start a conversation with you and get you connected with a partner at my firm to see what we can do.

Personal Finance-Getting a grip

We all are feeling the pinch of the down economy.  Some of us may be living with business as usual.  Others may be cutting back.  Still others may be facing the idea of a layoff.

Either way, we all are considering the status of our finances.  The question is how do we keep better control over our finances?

I had heard about a website called Mint, www.mint.com, this site is free and allows you to load all of your accounts in one convenient place.  This means you hook mint into your Checking, Savings, and major Bills like your mortgage.  Mint then will update your accounts automatically and help you to see where your money goes.

As I had explained in an earlier post, my wife and I use a credit card like a check card for all of our purchases.  We have the added benefit of getting points from our purchases which lead to additional bonuses throughout the year.  An added benefit of using the credit card is that the card can upload into mint and through the credit card I am able to see the categories of where I am spending my money.

It’s great in that we know where we are spending, what we are spending on, and Mint has a budget feature that allow us to set limits on what we are spending and receive warnings when we are near or over the limit.

Another benefit is Mint will send you a weekly report of where your accounts are.  I also added my investment accounts to Mint and get a weekly report of how my investments are doing.

All this for free!

Some further notes

As I am now working for a great CPA Firm in Milwaukee, Komisar Brady & Co. I have some new experiences that I will be able to share with you.  As it is currently tax season, I don’t have a lot of time to post, but I am coming up with a lot of new ideas.

I am now working extensively with Peachtree and QuickBooks.  In fact, part of my job is to be the expert in these programs.  I will be spending time posting on both of these programs and sharing ways that accountants can get more out of these useful tools.

An added benefit is I will share quite a bit on Peachtree.  I have found that most of the Peachtree training is not offered for free, now you will have a resource for good FREE ideas on working with Peachtree.  Watch for more to come.

Merry Christmas! The Journey Continues

Merry Christmas!

 

This year has turned out quite differently than I had expected.  I guess we can’t always expect things to work out just like we planned.  The economy, a change in leadership, gas prices, the stock market, and in general decisions made; all come into play when it comes to what we end up doing.

 

I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason.  Even though I found my self without a job near Halloween, I found an even better job by Christmas.  This is truly the best present I could have gotten.

 

With those thoughts in my mind, I would like to talk about the future.  I certainly will continue to blog.  I will have to find time differently as the demands of my new job probably will be quite a bit different from the demands of my past job.  But that is what the adventure of starting a new job is all about.  I firmly believe that my new job is and will continue to be an adventure as I get to contribute my developed skills and in return I will be learning a whole lot of new things.

 

Since I will be learning a whole new set of skills, I will continue to share them with you in my posts.  A kind of pay it forward if you will.  I will still continue to find more ways to talk about Excel, the life of an Accountant, and the other things I have talked about in the past.  I will have new things to talk about, since my new job has me delve into the world of QuickBooks, Peachtree, and perhaps taxes and audits.

 

The opportunities for topics are boundless and I look forward to sharing them with you as I learn about them.  Now I realize that many who view my blog don’t really read the current stuff, but search it for information they are looking for.  I continue to hope that my blog will remain a resource for those who need information on how to do things in their work.

 

For now I wish everyone a Happy Holiday!  And a Merry Christmas!

The Job Hunt-One Accountants Journey

The majority of the users of my site use it to find information on Excel and perhaps the CPA exam.  I really have not heard from anyone that I have not blogged in some time.  Just in case, someone is following along and perhaps I might touch someone with this post, I am going to tell you why I have not posted in over a months time.

 

Back in October my consulting assignment ended.  I knew something was up when a 40 million dollar company asked me to take time off without pay, while they found something new for me.  I quickly found out that I was right to be worried when I was laid off.

 

I had been consulting in the bank and brokerage industries.  For obvious reasons, there were no orders for work currently and in the future.  I could tell that I might have a problem and fortunately I was prepared.

 

I don’t know if any of you have ever lost a job.  I have been laid off before, a few years after 9/11 in the brokerage industry as I was a bank broker and the bank I was working for sold the majority of the branches in my territory, thus, I no longer had a viable working territory.  So, I found myself laid off.  Fortunately, at that time I was in a position and wanted to make a career change into accounting so, I was unemployed for roughly two days and was back at work.

 

This time around was very different.  One, even though I had a feeling that there was trouble, I did not believe it.  Second, I felt that I would be “on the bench” while my company found something for me.  So, even though I knew I should be worried, I wasn’t.

 

To lose a job is a terrible feeling.  I describe it best as losing a good friend.  The emotion side of things is harrowing.  You go through an actual morning period, you are sad, you are angry, you are scared, and even at some points you suffer from depression.  The fear and depression come from not knowing what your future holds.

 

Despite all of those emotions, it is imperative that you push on.  I have often heard that looking for a job is like still having a job.  In that job you are in charge of your own company and it is up to you to generate leads, and go to appointments.  If you do well those appointments will lead to a sale.

 

The thing about looking for a job is there are plenty of rules that others try to impose upon you.  Who to contact and how, where you need to go, limits on how much contact you can have.  On your end, you have to remember that you cannot play by their rules.  The reason is the rules exist to make their job easier and that does not help you when you are not employed.

 

That is why a network is so important.  Your network allows you to work around the rules and get to the person who can actually help you.  What if you don’t have a network?  Then create one, talk to family and friends, talk to colleagues that you are friendly with, and talk to recruiters.

 

Essentially, what you are doing is creating for yourself a group of sales people.  Especially the recruiters as they get paid if they get you hired.  These sales people will try to get you in front of those you need to talk to, more importantly; it gets you around the rules.  Talk to as many recruiters as you can.

 

The online websites have become a very valuable tool.  I highly recommend Indeed.com.  This site will search all of the other sites based on your job search criteria and bring to you in one spot all of the jobs you may be looking for.  I was able to get five interviews based on submissions from the Indeed website.  Not only does it look at Career Builder and Monster, it looks at company and other more obscure job websites.  Indeed is a wonderful time saver.  Also, be sure to look at Career Builder and Monster because I found that Indeed missed a few jobs.  This was probably due to the criteria I put in did not match exactly.

 

The one thing we accountants can do is temp if needed.  I contacted all of the temp agencies in my area and offered up my services.  By doing this, I had a job within three days of being laid off.  Essentially, I was back working at pretty much my same salary.  Granted I did not have benefits, but, it is temporary and the idea is to keep the bills paid.

 

If you are temping, be sure to make it clear that you are looking for permanent work.  This gives you leverage to go out and interview and you never know, the temp job may become permanent.

 

Interviewing, what I can say about that is do your homework, learn about the company you are interviewing with.  There are plenty of resources to find out about companies.  I mainly used Hoovers and Yahoo.  Both had plenty of resources to get a handle on the company you are going to meet with.  Also, want to bend the rules, Hoovers often has contact information for the CFO on the site.  You could send an e-mail or letter right to the head of the finance area and get your foot in the door.

 

I also raided websites for interview questions.  If you look at enough sites you will have a good list of questions to ask, be sure to customize a bit for the company.  But the list will give you a good place to start.

 

By doing all of this, I ended up finding a great job.  In fact, I had two offers within an hour of each other.  I picked the one that fit me better and now I am back on track.

 

Losing a job could be a reality for many of us as we work through this recession.  At best you will make it through without a scratch, but if you find yourself without a job, do what you can to keep working and work hard to find the next job.  You may find that things happen for a reason.

 

If I really look at my situation, I was technically without work for roughly a week.  Then I was right back at it.  Good luck to everyone who may be on the job hunt.

Managers Corner: Are you treating your employee’s right?

 

Sorry that I have not posted in awhile.  Things just keep piling up, making it harder and harder to find time to do the extras.  Unfortunately, my blog is one of the extras.  The other day a fellow employee gave me something I have not heard in a long time. She gave me a complement on my work and told me she appreciated my work.  Funny thing was it was not a manager but a fellow employee.

This lead to a conversation that indeed we rarely hear from management when we are doing well.  We certainly hear plenty when we make a mistake, however, we rarely hear from management when we are doing just fine.

It’s kind of by design, when we make a mistake, management needs to address it and they need to assure that the mistake will not affect other or at least will minimally affect others.  Management also needs to assess whether or not the error will occur again, whether or not the error occurred by employee error or by system error.  Often with that assessment there is criticism and or a critical discussion with the employee.  Most of the time it is just done to ascertain what happened to create the error.

So, why would managers not have the same conversations when things are going well?  Put simply, managers are asked to do so much and their time becomes so limited, that taking the time to give a complement becomes secondary.  Once that habit is formed, then complements simply do not come.

There are times when silence is golden, however, in the workplace it’s not a good habit to have.  When a policy of, “you will hear from me only if there is an issue.”  Seems to be a way to create an air of you are fine if you hear nothing.  This is an excuse to not communicate, and it is a shortcut to only deal with things when problems occur.  This creates even more issues because, one when you ask to see an employee to discuss something, they will immediately jump to the conclusion that there is a problem which creates stress.  Secondly, you develop the habit of not communicating even simple issues.

This leads to not treating employees as they should be treated.  Employees appreciate complements on their work and will perform better when given them.  Instead of creating habits to not communicate and not give positive feedback it might be a better habit to give compliments whenever possible.  If you lack the time, give the compliment when you pass the employee in the hall, or when returning a piece of work, or even ask them to stay a moment after a meeting.

Note something?  Giving a complement or encouragement only takes a moment.  Dealing with problems takes a lot of time.  Employees that feel good about their jobs and are reminded that they are valued employees will and can do better and will work to eliminate mistakes.  A simple complement or work of encouragement not only can be done easily it may help you to save money in the long run.

Back to Work: Cash is king, a day with an Accountant

What a wild two weeks!  It never ceases to amaze me the amount of work that can all be generated at the same time.  In my case I had month end duties, year-end duties, projects, and conversions all due at once.  Everybody in the department was working hours upon hours just to keep up.  Fast-forward to a week later and things have returned too normal.

 

That aside, its good to be able to take some time to again, sit back and continue the conversation on accounting.  I know that I stick pretty much to Excel tips and tricks; however, I have been promising over and over to get on Accounting topics.

 

The thing is how do I make these topics have a little zing to them?  How about remaining educational?  I believe I alluded to the idea of describing a day in the life of an Accountant, or in my case a Financial Analyst.  So, lets take a good look at what a typical day is like.  I will be working through a day slowly and making each task a topic so this may go on through several narratives.

 

My current role, as a contract employee, is to handle a specific account for the company I am assisting.  I will not be able to give too much in specifics, since I am afraid of crossing the confidentiality line, so I will try to describe things as generally as possible, and perhaps try to look at similarities I have run across with several of my assignments.

 

The life of a Financial Analyst varies.  Sometimes I am called upon to handle day-to-day accounting entries. Other times I may be involved in high-level decisions on budgets or reporting standards.  Either way, the job has its ups and downs.  That is something we all need to understand.  Every job has it mundane parts, but that makes the fun and interesting stuff even more of a treat.

 

My day begins with a look at my assignments cash position.  As we learn in school, cash is king, without a solid cash position a company can go south very fast.  So, each morning I get to sit down and balance out the cash.  As soon as I am satisfied, I then report the cash position to the individuals that rely on that information for their decisions.

 

I have done that in many roles, a few years back I was employed as a controller for a small catalogue retail firm.  Again, my first task each morning was to assess the cash position and report it to the president.  He in turn would either move money into the account or out of the account as needs warranted.  The idea was to maximize the interest earned, while maintaining enough liquidity, so we often moved money from the savings to the checking and vice-versa. 

 

In my current role, the cash amount determines what needs to be done.  So, it’s similar, yet we are not moving the money back and forth from two bank accounts.  In my current situation, the cash amount determines purchase and sale of other items.

 

So, what is assessment of the cash balance entail?  Without getting too deep into the details and put in its simplest of terms.  Balancing the cash is like balancing your checkbook against your bank statement.  You essentially, check where you were the day before, subtract payments made and add deposits received.  Of course for a corporation, the payments and deposits come in many forms, sometimes it’s a result of external activity such as a customer paying their invoice.  Other times it may be something internal such as the sale of a bond, or stock, or even inventory.  Either way, in it’s simplest of forms, its cash coming in and cash going out.

 

This role is to make sure there is enough cash available to run the business, therefore the morning cash balance is key to assuring there is available cash on account to accomplish this.  Next time we will be discussing reconciliation’s.  This again may be on a high level to assure that privacy is maintained.

Please Stand By…

I have been slammed with projects and year end work.  The company I am currently at has it year end at the end of September.

I have so much going on, I just do not know which way is up, and I have not had a single free moment to come up with a topic.  On top of year end, we are also short a few people and we are in the midst of a system changeover.

Talk about overload!

I will try to get back to the blogging when things calm down a bit.

Take a minute and get your bearings and credit scores!

Every once and awhile it is worth it to take a step back from everything and evaluate what you are doing.  I am to a point going through that process.  I have gone through a lot of changes, some of these changes have occurred in the last week or so.

 

One thing that I did change was I closed another blogging project I was working on.  Like I had said in my closing statements, it was supposed to be fun, but in the end it became a chore.  Bad news for my small group of readers over there, good news for my readers over here.

 

I am working up even more ideas for articles over at Abacus, and I hope that I might be able increase my posting.  As for now I am going to have to keep it to twice a week, but perhaps I can increase the content when I do post.  Possibly two articles rather than one.

 

I floated several ideas yesterday, one of which was to cover some politics.  I am not sure if I want to delve into politics here unless I can somehow connect what is going on in Washington to Accounting.  That is generally handled by FASB announcements and things like that.  But I did work up something, only later to reject it.

 

I had another idea that I developed regarding a job description I found on Monster.com.  It is a general description of what I do.  I thought perhaps I could develop a series of articles that describe “a day in the life of ….”  This might be good for those considering a career in accounting.  So its something I want to look at and develop further.

 

Just so I have something to share, I found out about two sites that seem to be a great way to keep track of your credit score and credit health.  I was plunking around on these sites last night and felt they were worth looking at. Especially, if you are looking to improve your own financial health.

 

Quizzle.com is a nice little site that is very easy to use and very quick to set up.  All you need to do is set up a log in and password, answer a few questions, confirm who you are and you have access to your credit score, and credit history.  This is all the time rather than once a year like “Free Credit Report”.  The site also helps you with budgeting and tracking your credit.

 

CreditKarma.Com is similar to Quizzle.  Credit Karma is different because it has offers that you can take advantage of, by having a great credit score.  These offers are for phones and phone plans, credit cards and loans.  On a personal note, unless you are in the market for a loan or card I would work with Quizzle rather than Credit Karma.

 

Either on Friday or Monday I will have my usual installment of Excel Toolbox, then I may start “a day in the life of…”  I am sure there is more to come.

Excel Toolbox: Using comments in a spreadsheet

I decided that for now I will try to do an Excel Toolbox at least once a week.  For one thing I am pretty practiced at doing it and it still seems to be my most popular article series.  Generally I try to pick out something that I encountered while working to write about but there are times when I just have one of those weeks where nothing unusual happens.

 

I decided that on those weeks that I will look at the dropdown boxes and just pick something to look at.  This week I chose comments or the comments box.

 

Comments are a great way to put a reminder, note, or instructions into an individual cell.  I have encountered all of the above in my various uses of Excel spreadsheets.  Comments are one of the more basic Excel functions you will encounter.

 

For my example I will use the budget worksheet I used for my discussion on personal budgets last week.  Lets use as our example that I want to put a note to myself concerning my equity payment.  I want to remind myself to update the auto pay information with my bank.

 

The process is simple. I select the cell where my payment for my equity is recorded.  I select Insert and then select comment.

 

 

Selection Box

 

 

 

 

See how the comment box pops up.

 

 

Comment Box

 

 

 

 

Now I make my comment.  I simply type in what I want.  I can also select the font and size of my script for my comment.  You will notice that the comment box is surrounded by smaller boxes at each corner and in the middle of each side.  This is so you can change the size of your box or move the box around.  Simply hover over the box to get the arrows to direct what you can do.

 

 

Add your comment

 

 

 

 

When you are done, click on the cell where you put your comment. You should notice a red triangle in the upper right corner of your cell. If you hover your cursor over the cell the comment should pop up.

 

Look for the red triangle

 

When you select the Insert drop down you will notice that the comment command is now edit comment.  If you select the edit comment you should be able to change the comment.

 

By right clicking on the field that has the comment you will be given the options to edit, delete, and hide or unhide the comment.  This comes in handy if your comments remain out on the worksheet and blocks what you want to see behind it.

 

Comments can be a tremendous time saver by acting as way to give yourself important reminders.