Spreadsheets And GIGO

JPMorgan Chase's recent $6 billion trading loss was viewed as a huge error in judgement. However, the company laid the blame for a portion of the loss on an error in a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are a valuable tool in Finance, but the old adage of "Garbage in, garbage out" (GIGO) still applies. Software has helped improve the accuracy of spreadsheets. When you consider that companies may have 50,000 or more spreadsheets, you should recognize the sheer number of possible errors. And, if you are not sure why you should learn to use Excel, consider one number in the article: More than 59 percent of Finance employees spend more than one-half of their time working with spreadsheets.