A popular "real estate analysis" package provides spreadsheet templates that do all the financial calculations and record-keeping associated with owning and managing commercial and residential real estate. These templates will print property-by-property cash flow reports and generate amortization tables for many different loans. They will also help you construct annual operating statements for each property, and project future operating costs based on previous years' data or based on estimates for property not yet acquired. Some of these templates allow you to combine data for many different properties into consolidated operating statements.
There are literally dozens of other templates available to calculate everything from biorhythms and family budgets to time and billing reports.
While most worksheets are usually set up to ask for input values and calculate "bottom line" results, it doesn't have to stay this way. Supplemental software exists to make your spreadsheet operate in reverse.
That is, you enter the bottom-line results you want to achieve, and the spreadsheet calculates the exact input values--such as sales or list prices--that will achieve them for you.
To top all this off, you can even start from square one. Supplemental programs provide spreadsheet (and personal computer) tutorials that assume you know nothing and teach you how to make full use of your general spreadsheet software.
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About the author: This complimentary resource is (c) 1995 by
Robert Moskowitz, who is available for consulting, speaking and strategic planning on a wide variety of white-collar productivity and technology issues. You can reach him via fax (818) 224-4343, email:
robertam@knowledgetree.com or by mail to Box 6375, Woodland Hills, CA 91365.
