Data Management by WOW Factor Concept

Are you ready to enhance your company's reports, or do you need an Excel course delivered to your team? Say no more, you are in the right place! I am Mihaela Stancu, the enthusiastic managing owner of WOW Factor Concept company, based in Bucharest, Romania. What I do best is also my long-life passion: translating business data into compact and relevant Excel reports, so managers can better understand their activity and quickly make well-informed decisions about further development of the business, using my 20+ years of experience in several top multinational companies and my specific financial controlling expertise. Due to my extensive knowledge of both Finance field and technical reporting techniques, I collaborate with small to medium companies, providing them with dedicated design and implementation of their reporting system using Excel, consultancy for and optimization of their existing management reporting, automation of their routine activities and reports, and many other related activities. I am also open to any collaboration involving increasing efficiency of revenue reporting, budgeting activities, cost analysis and related fields. My professional expertise on budgetary goals is also doubled by experienced forecast of costs and revenues. I am also a certified Trainer within Extreme Training with Minister of Education and Research and Ministry of Labor and Social Protection in Romania, providing mainly online Excel courses and trainings, for all levels, both to individuals and private companies' employees. I take pride in using my knowledge and skills to help people reaching their technical potential while working with excellent reporting tools, translating business requirements into dynamic and responsive reports, and doing all this using a simple, everyday language. If I've got your attention, please find attached the updated presentation of my services (RO). Happy to share more details with you, if the case. Thank you! #Excel #Consultancy #Course #Training #FinancialManagement #Controlling #Reporting #DeliveringExcellence #LivrezExcelență #Presentation #ExcelForYourBusiness #TranslateDataIntoRelevantExcelReports #ExcelExpertise #DataManagement #WowFactor #HowCanIHelp #WhyMe #OpenForBusiness

Winter season is already here and traditionally this time of the year we are trying to take a little break from our everyday activities, to spend more time with our loved ones. Of course, there are cases when this time of the year is the busiest and a vacation is not exactly possible (at least not a long one): if you are an accountant, for instance, December is pretty much loaded with work and reports to be done.   However, we do have some exceptions (even for accountants, for instance if the fiscal year is not the same as the calendar one!), so let’s hear you out: do you have plans for a little break this time of the year?   As for me, if I don’t have some urgent tasks for my clients (usually I do, since in some cases I’m in charge with their reporting systems…), I like to spend this time of the year with my partner and our 4 cats 😊 next to a hot cup of coffee and maybe baking some chocolate sweets. No matter how busy I am, I still keep at least 2 days (like Christmas Eve and Christmas Day) just for us, and I always use at least a few hours to think about what was good this year and what I want my priorities to be for the next year, both personally and professionally as a freelancer.   How about you? What are your plans for this time of the year? #OpenForBusiness #Excel #Consultancy #Course #Training #FinancialManagement #Controlling #Reporting #DataManagement #WowFactor #WowFactorConcept #TranslateDataIntoRelevantExcelReports #Romanian #Online #ExcelQuestion #HowAbout #Conversation #Inspiration #NotJustExcel #Christmas #NewYear #Vacation #Holiday

Companies offer seasonal discounts primarily to attract customers during peak shopping periods, boost sales, and foster lasting customer loyalty. These discounts allow businesses to clear out older inventory, making room for new products and maintaining a fresh and appealing catalog. By aligning discounts with popular shopping seasons, such as holidays or back-to-school times, companies create a sense of urgency that encourages customers to make immediate purchases, increasing conversion rates. Seasonal discounts also present an opportunity to draw in new customers, potentially turning one-time shoppers into long-term loyal patrons.   To announce these discounts effectively, companies use strategic channels like social media, email marketing, and their websites. Early promotion through these platforms maximizes visibility and gives customers a chance to plan their purchases. Personalized email campaigns, for instance, allow businesses to target their loyal customers directly, making them feel valued and incentivizing them to shop. Meanwhile, social media posts and ads help create excitement, ensuring the message reaches a wide audience and builds anticipation.   For the best impact, companies often craft limited-time campaigns to make the discount period feel exclusive, adding appeal for shoppers looking for a deal. Using catchy, time-sensitive ad campaigns and bundling products at discounted rates appeals especially to customers seeking holiday gifts. Seasonal discounts not only enhance a company's sales but also generate goodwill by aligning the brand with the holiday spirit, creating a positive association that lasts well beyond the season. So, make sure your company prepares something for the holidays approaching! #OpenForBusiness #Excel #Consultancy #Course #Training #FinancialManagement #Controlling #Reporting #DataManagement #WowFactor #WowFactorConcept #TranslateDataIntoRelevantExcelReports #Romanian #Online #ExcelQuestion #HowAbout #Conversation #Inspiration #ExcelWhatIf #ExcelMostWanted #Sales #Bonus #Discount #Christmas #NewYear

There are many ways to keep track of your products’ stock, in order to make sure you’ll always have available the right quantity to keep up with your clients’ orders. Also, the inventory that must be made at the end of each year is a legal requirement, so you’ll have to have it also covered by whatever tool you’re currently using.   Most of times, stock is managed by different dedicated software, especially if the products you have are more complex: for instance, you can have the same product in different colors so you’ll need a different ID for each color of the same product, or a common ID together with a descriptive attribute for each color. Also, maybe your products have expiration dates, so in this case it’s not important just the quantity alone, but also the distribution of a product over time.   However, in simple cases, your stock can be managed in Excel, using functions and formulas or even Power Query for extra flexibility of your reports and a more advanced way of organizing the data flows.   In our example today, we’ll use a simple method to build a report for managing the current available stock for our products, starting with their initial stock at the beginning of the year, adding all products purchased up to today and deducting all products already sold. The result will be compared to the minimum quantity that needs to be available for each product (depending on how much and how often we’re actually selling that product), and in case our stock is lower that the calculated threshold, we’ll add a Conditional Formatting rule to flag these cases. Let’s see how it goes! #OpenForBusiness #Excel #Consultancy #Course #Training #FinancialManagement #Controlling #Reporting #DataManagement #WowFactor #WowFactorConcept #TranslateDataIntoRelevantExcelReports #Romanian #Online #ExcelExpertise #ExcelHowTo #Stock #Inventory #PowerQuery https://lnkd.in/dWCVaN2y

There are a lot of situations when we need to convert values from one system to another system. For instance, this can happen when we use a recipe whose ingredients are shown in Imperial (US) system (like cups, teaspoon, tablespoon and so on) but we need these converted into metric system, so we can match our local ingredients. Sometimes, we can chat with our colleagues from around the world and complain about excessive heat in the summer: we’re saying 35 degrees and use Celsius scale by default, but we should convert it to their Fahrenheit scale if we want them to understand how hot it is for us. Or maybe we’re working as translators and we need to translate the speed ticket given to somebody rushing with 60 miles per hour: we should convert it km per hour when translating into Romanian, so our public will understand the context.   Sometimes, we get the conversions from the source itself, as many recipes (for instance) use both systems for the ingredient list. However, if we’re dealing with these converting issues quite frequently, we should use CONVERT function in Excel, ready to be applied instantly when we need to switch from one system to the other. Is it complicated? Not quite, as long as you choose the correct abbreviations 😊 for what you need: in this case, instead of writing them inside the function, we’ll show them on separate columns, to get used to them!   In our example today, we have a brief list of indicators, with their metric values (mostly used internationally), ready to be converted into imperial values (mostly used in UK and USA). Let’s assume we need these indicators to be ready for conversion at any time: we’ll just put in the metric value and we’ll instantly get their imperial equivalent. Let’s see together how this goes! #OpenForBusiness #Excel #Consultancy #Course #Training #FinancialManagement #Controlling #Reporting #DataManagement #WowFactor #WowFactorConcept #TranslateDataIntoRelevantExcelReports #Romanian #Online #ExcelExpertise #ExcelHowTo #ExcelFunction #ConvertFunction #CONVERT

There are many ways to keep track of your products’ stock, in order to make sure you’ll always have available the right quantity to keep up with your clients’ orders. Also, the inventory that must be made at the end of each year is a legal requirement, so you’ll have to have it also covered by whatever tool you’re currently using.   Most of times, stock is managed by different dedicated software, especially if the products you have are more complex: for instance, you can have the same product in different colors so you’ll need a different ID for each color of the same product, or a common ID together with a descriptive attribute for each color. Also, maybe your products have expiration dates, so in this case it’s not important just the quantity alone, but also the distribution of a product in time.   However, in simple cases, your stock can be managed in Excel, using functions and formulas or even Power Query for extra flexibility of your reports and a more advanced way of organizing the data flows.   How about you? Do you use Excel to manage your stock? Or do you use dedicated software for this? Are you happy with the solution you’re using today? Do you think there is something yet to be improved about it? Let me know in the comments! #OpenForBusiness #Excel #Consultancy #Course #Training #FinancialManagement #Controlling #Reporting #DataManagement #WowFactor #WowFactorConcept #TranslateDataIntoRelevantExcelReports #Romanian #Online #ExcelQuestion #HowAbout #Conversation #Inspiration #ExcelForYourBusiness #ExcelForYou #ExcelWhatIf #Stock #Inventory #PowerQuery

Not sure if I've told you before, but even if I'm not at all superstitious, for me the lucky number 13 😊 was always more relatable to joy than to bad luck, and June 13th this year was no exception! I've been invited to share some of my Excel experience from the projects I've worked for in my consultancy business, on the SSBI Central Youtube channel (a great home for anyone interested in learning more about advanced Excel tools and especially about Power BI). It was an incredible and unexpected honor for me to be part of this challenge, and for this I have to thank, from the bottom of my heart, to Cristian Angyal and Cristian Prifti for the kind invitation, for all the support offered, and last but not least, for the coordination of this extraordinary channel which over time has hosted (and will host again!) big names "from the industry". If you haven't already subscribed to this channel, don't hesitate: it's a place where excellence is at home. And... what was I talking about? Well, in Romanian, but yet Excel is an universal language! 😊 When you have lots of data coming your way, you might find it impossible to approach just the one you actually need, in order to work more efficiently. But wait, this is not the complete story: once you get the right data, how can you make sure that you don't get swamped into repetitive tasks? Well, there is no one-size-fit-all solution, but let's see 3 examples where you can use Power Query in Excel to automate your work. First, we'll see how we can build a database out of lots of data coming from different fields of similar documents: we have many Excel invoices loaded into a folder and we would like to extract the main information out of them, like number, issue date, client name, values and so on. Second, we have an attendance sheet which is completed by our HR colleague who wants to complete this in a certain way, but we also have our Financial colleague who need it under a totally different layout. Can we make peace between these 2? And third, let's see an easy one but still very useful for our everyday work: how can we import the official BNR exchange rates and use them for our reports, including possible week-end transactions? Let's find this out! #OpenForBusiness #Excel #Consultancy #Course #Training #FinancialManagement #Controlling #Reporting #DataManagement #WowFactor #WowFactorConcept #TranslateDataIntoRelevantExcelReports #Romanian #Online #ExcelExpertise #ExcelHowTo #Recurring #Automate #PowerQuery #ROPUG https://lnkd.in/dhhhq_Dj

Using Subtotal option in Excel might be useful sometimes, when we want to show a detailed list but to also have the data aggregated by a certain column, using a specific function, like SUM, AVERAGE, and so on.   Personally, I’m not a big advocate of using this option, as I don’t like to see raw data together with aggregated data on the same sheet (I always keep separate my sources from my reports). However, there is also a SUBTOTAL function (which is actually automatically used by this option) which can be used on its own. In this case, you can choose what kind of operation do you want to perform on a certain range or entire column. By changing just one parameter of the SUBTOTAL function and keeping the selected area unchanged, you can get multiple results depending on what you want to analyze: total value of the respective range, the average value, the minimum and maximum values of that range, etc.   In our example today, we have a list of sales data for one of our clients, with details at Order ID level. We are in the early stage of building a report about that client, and we want to have a general idea about a few KPIs related to the client, so we can organize the information we want to present depending on the results we get. At this stage, we are not sure if we’ll need the total sales value, or the average value per order, or if we want to present the smallest or the biggest sales value per client, so we’ll use SUBTOTAL function as a starting point. Let’s see together how this goes! #OpenForBusiness #Excel #Consultancy #Course #Training #FinancialManagement #Controlling #Reporting #DataManagement #WowFactor #WowFactorConcept #TranslateDataIntoRelevantExcelReports #Romanian #Online #ExcelExpertise #ExcelHowTo #ExcelFunction #SubtotalFunction #SumFunction #AverageFunction #MaxFunction #MinFunction #SUBTOTAL #SUM #AVERAGE #MAX #MIN

One important definition that I clarify with almost all my clients who are booking private Excel classes is related to tables. Most of them consider that a table is what we see in Excel as columns put together, with rows filled with data for each column, at cell level. This kind of approach is based on the visual way of showing data in Excel.   But this, my dear friends, is not a table. These are individual cells grouped together in a certain location, but that’s all: the cells are keeping their individual references and they are not aware of any neighbors around them. To get all this data to be seen as a table, you’ll have to define your table using the Insert Table option available on the menu, or to use Ctrl + T if you’re familiar with shortcuts. Then the party starts: you’ll have to give your table a name, and all the information inside the table will be seen as a whole, when imported somewhere else (like using Power Query) or when used as a data source.   There are a lot of benefits when using a table (I’m speaking about all of them in my Flash course dedicated to pivots and slicers in Excel), and I recommend defining your data sources this way almost all the time. The only time when I don’t recommend using a defined table is when we don’t have the same formula for all the cells in a column (for instance, when we’re building a Profit and Loss report, and each row comes with its own definition). But in most cases, all source data (and most of the reports) are good candidates for being defined as tables.   How about you? Did you know about this difference between a “visual” table and a defined one? Do you use defined tables when working with Excel? What’s your biggest advantage seen when working with defined tables? Let me know in the comments! #OpenForBusiness #Excel #Consultancy #Course #Training #FinancialManagement #Controlling #Reporting #DataManagement #WowFactor #WowFactorConcept #TranslateDataIntoRelevantExcelReports #Romanian #Online #ExcelQuestion #HowAbout #Conversation #Inspiration #ExcelForYourBusiness #ExcelForYou #ExcelWhatIf #Table

One of the most interesting options when you’re working in Excel using the Office 365 version, is that you have a personal assistant to guide your getting the most out of your data sources: I’m talking about the Analyze Data option, available as a separate tab in Home menu. At some point in time, this option was actually called “Ideas” and I think it was an excellent choice, since it’s supposed to make suggestions based on your raw data, about what kind of reports you can build on top of this available data.   This option is based on natural language interpretation, meaning you can explain in a few words what kind of report would you like to have built for you within seconds. This kind of dialogue is available in a few of the most commonly used languages and can be very useful especially if you’re not (yet!) familiar with Excel functions, pivots and charts. Even if you don’t ask a specific question, by simply clicking on a cell within a certain range (a table, for instance), you can get some ideas about what kind or summary reports you can build with the existing data that you have. Sounds interesting, right?!   In our example today, we’ll use this feature for our database containing sales data and expected payment for each sale. As we need a quick look on the data, we’ll choose to present total sales by client and by product, and we’ll also ask for the expected payments as total monthly values. With the help of this option, we’ll get both pivot tables and charts, ready to be further customized very quickly, by applying a suggested design and with minor manual adjustments.   Let’s see how it goes! #OpenForBusiness #Excel #Consultancy #Course #Training #FinancialManagement #Controlling #Reporting #DataManagement #WowFactor #WowFactorConcept #TranslateDataIntoRelevantExcelReports #Romanian #Online #ExcelExpertise #ExcelHowTo #Sales #Reports #AnalyzeData #Office365 https://lnkd.in/ds3VxPeH