Love Copy/Paste… Except for Data Reports

Recently, I completed a custom project. Let’s go over this team’s specific need and what they wanted to improve.

This team already had great best practices. They used Microsoft Excel (web version) to track tasks and appointments each year. They used codes to track the type or category of services. All that utilized the tracker were well-trained and used it consistently. They were on top of it!

How could we make things better?

Providing your team with tools and resources to make their jobs easier

The team was manually copying and pasting information in order to add up category numbers for their data reports. Sometimes this meant data was copied multiple times or forgotten altogether!

I made a few edits to their current sheet so it still utilized their codes and structures. This limited the amount of new learning for their staff and volunteers.

The biggest game changer for them was the Excel formula VSTACK. Each person had a separate sheet, so I combined all their data into one sheet using VSTACK. Afterwards, I was able to visually display key categories and auto-tabulate information. Three cheers for no more copy/paste efforts!

Now the team is able to continue their individual logs all while the manager gets instant updates on appointments and categories.