Business / Home Inventory Excel Template Support

The Business / Home Inventory template is used to record business or household property items, date purchased, cost, warrantee expire date, warrantee terms, place of purchase, how purchased, location (room), current value, good type and other related information.

The Basics

To use the Business / Home Inventory Excel template you need a minimal understanding of Microsoft Excel and you need Excel 97 or later.

Excel versions: Excel 2002, Excel 2000, and Excel 97 on Microsoft Windows is required to open and update the template. Mac versions of Excel (98 2001, & X) that are compatible with these Windows versions will most likely work fine. Excel viewers can open and print but not update the worksheets from any PC.

This template is meant to save you time and give you a starting point at building a useful inventory workbook. It is fairly open (unprotected) to enable you to customize it. You can change information, hide columns, and add new columns. The more advanced you are with Excel, the more you will be able to tweak the design of the template. To keep things simple, this template avoids all Excel macro code.

Adding New Data

Click on the Inventory tab and then just position the Excel cursor at the first empty line below the headings. Fill-in the inventory information you wish to capture. Enter as few or as many columns as you need. Knock yourself out, Excel can store over 65,000 rows on each sheet.

Data entry will go much quicker if AutoComplete is turned on. Check this setting at the menu Tools|Options|Edit, Enable AutoComplete for cell values option.

Remember, when you are done, SAVE the workbook (File|Save) or all of you data entry will be lost.

Filtering Data

Tip: Excel 2000 and Excel 97 will not support "Filtering" unless you Unprotect the Inventory sheet (Tools|Protection|Unprotect).

This template supports in-place filtering the item list for specific values such as specific room, i.e. Office. Filtering hides rows of the sheet to show only the rows that match you filtering criteria.

Filtering can be applied to any column. Initially the template is setup with Excel's AutoFilter feature turned on. Each column in the list of Inventory columns has a small light gray button with a down arrow in the lower right corner of each heading. If you click on the list, it will show a list of filtering options. Select and release one of those options to apply that filtering choice to the list. When a column is used as a filter, the down arrow in that column will be colored blue, instead of black.

To remove filtering, set column filters you have changed back to (all). The down arrows in each filter button will change back to black when you remove the filter on that column.

To do complex filtering, you need to use the Advanced Filter feature as defined under the menus Data|Filter. See Excel help for detailed information on the Advance Filter.

Sorting

You can sort the items inventoried on any one or a combination of column headings in the Inventory sheet. To sort the list, position the Excel cursor to select a cell in the heading. It will automatically try to determine what to sort (the row and column range) based on a region that has values in all rows and all columns. Many cells can be blank.

WARNING: You can't have an entire row or an entire column that is blank. If this condition is true, STOP, don't sort the range, you WILL damage your data. If you sort an incomplete list of data, just use the menu Edit|Undo Sort to fix the problem.

Assuming you have a proper data region with out blank rows, or blank columns, you can sort data on one column using the Standard tool bar Sort Ascending or Sort Descending buttons, or you can use the Data|Sort menu. The Sort menu will allow you to sort on up to three columns at a time. Use the Sort menu multiple times if you need to sort on more that three columns. Start with the least significant columns first. Your last sort will be with the three most significant columns. If you make a mistake remember to undo the sort.

Printing

Use the File|Print menu to print any of the three worksheets included in the template. You can use Page Setup to modify the printing of any of the sheets.

The first sheet can be printed as a coversheet with owner or preparer information printed out. The second sheet, Inventory, can be quite long. Limit pages by using filtering or hiding columns. The last sheet is instructions. All reports are set to print in Black and White mode to save ink and the cost of printing. Colors and shading are not printed in this mode.

Print partial sheets by specifying page numbers. You can also selecting the data you want printed first and then indicate that you want to print the Selection in the print dialog.

Saving Excel Workbooks

Use the File|Save menu to save your changes. When you exit with out saving, Excel will ask you if you want to save changes. Respond Yes to save changes.

Data Protection

All sheets in the template are delivered to you in a protected mode. The Owner and Inventory sheets don't have a password and can be unprotected whenever you require. The Instructions sheet has a password and is not meant to be changed by you.

Unprotecting: Use the Tools|Protection|Unprotect menu.

Protecting: Use the Tools|Protection|Protect menu. Leave the password blank.

Hiding Columns

If you don't use a column, hide it so you don't have to skip it when entering data. Hide columns you don't want to print before printed the Inventory sheet. To hide or unhide a column, the sheet must be unprotected first.

Hide a column: Use the Format|Column|Hide menu.

Unhide a column: Use the Format|Column|Unhide menu.

Benefits:	Data entry worksheet / database. Quick data entry. All with Excel. Flexible, customize the template to fit your needs.
• Insurance Claims • Tax Records • Property Valuation • Warrantee Management • Rebate Information • Locate Items
Features:	Report can be filtered and sorted. Use Excel to group and add Subtotals. Use Page Setup to control printing. B&W mode saves color inks.
• Excel options left open for you to control • Autofilter turned on to filter data • Copy Inventory sheet for groupings • Purchase, warrantee, rebate, location... • Extensive comments and documentation • 30 day money back guarantee