There are many features and functions payroll professionals might not be aware of that can be used to improve the accuracy and efficiency of payroll production. In this valuable webcast, Excel expert David Ringstrom, CPA, clearly explains: mathematics for employee time sheets, date and time formatting and stamping, conditional formatting to highlight HR requirements, password protection for sensitive payroll files and worksheets, salary information formatting, and using pivot tables for HR reporting and analysis tasks.

David demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the subscription-based Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365) version of Excel. David draws your attention to any differences in the older versions of Excel (2019, 2016, 2013, and earlier) during the presentation as well as in his detailed handouts. David also provides an Excel workbook that includes most of the examples he uses during the webcast.

Microsoft 365 is a subscription-based product that provides new-feature updates as often as monthly. Conversely, the perpetual licensed versions of Excel have feature sets that don’t change. Perpetual licensed versions have year numbers, such as Excel 2019, Excel 2016, and so on.

• Using Excel’s Text to Columns feature to convert Social Security numbers to values and then apply Excel’s Social Security number format
• Redacting portions of Social Security numbers by way of Excel’s TEXT worksheet function
• Discovering the capabilities of the SUMPRODUCT function for calculating payroll and other amounts
• Revealing the undocumented DATEDIF function in Excel for determining the number of months or years between two dates
• Utilizing the NETWORKDAYS function to ascertain the number of workdays between two dates
• Determining how to calculate the last day of the current month, as well as future or prior months, with the EOMONTH function
• Computing the due dates for semimonthly federal payroll tax deposits by using the CHOOSE and WEEKDAY functions
• Drilling down into the details behind any amount within a pivot table with just a double-click
• Discovering four different ways to remove data from a pivot table report
• Utilizing the RANDBETWEEN worksheet function to create a series of random numbers
• Employing pivot tables to pull random sets of employee names, such as for drug testing
• Preventing errors from the start by choosing from thousands of free Excel spreadsheet templates
• Limiting access to sensitive workbooks by way of password protection
• Exploring options for recovering lost passwords for Excel spreadsheets