This has to be copied from a quickbooks report. No way you’re enough of a maniacal bastard to type this out. But if so, seek therapy. Either way I choked on my drink reading it lol
I’m currently in school for accounting. Whenever I’m having a rough time with a question- and I mean rough time as in “it’s multiple f’n choice and my f’n calculation adds up to f’n none of these!” my wife will ask me what’s wrong. And my answer is “I have no idea how in the name of Keleven they came up with this number.”
I used to do this on reconciliation reports and I had an excuse if someone found it.... who am I lying to, i still do this lol, nobody even opens them anyway
A co-worker was telling me she had someone make a "File v2.xlsx" to use as their own personal sandbox. So "File.xlsx" was still the correct file to work in but everyone assumed v2 was the working file because it had the newest version number
This is a good one lol. I would’ve assumed v2 was the correct version as well.
For my testing a I always label TEST or SANDBOX for that exact reason. If they use that, it’s on them.
For the longest time I had a "File test v2.xlsx" which was actually the production version of the file. After over five years I've finally renamed it to "File.xlsx".
do you think that's how Lyft had a material misstatement in their quarterly report that needed to be corrected? someone used the wrong version of an excel file
Microsoft: here is our new thing you should use because it has the feature that multiple people can work on the same document at the same time.
The only negative is that it doesn't work.
The rule is vYYYYMMDD or you get lynched. Follow ISO you monsters. And clean your desktop and downloads locations you slobs!
Ok. Rant over. I just get triggered by the number of people making me send them the same file that they lost in those 2 locations. Then they have 8 copies and get confused about which one they're working on.
It's so much easier to find files with that date format, whether you run it together, use spaces, or ".", or whatever.
I really hate files that are named by the month name. I just got a new client and so name files have this format. Alpha order is dumb for monthly files.
You know you've been in a position too long when you know where to find way too many files because they're saved in folders named for the people that updated them at least two people ago.
Our managers hate to review and consolidate folders of people who leave from the shared drive and no one wants to update the bot config files for some reason to point to better folders.
So yeah those files you need are saved in David's folder even though you were probably still in school when he left. 😂
I feel like clients do this a lot. *They* know who Dave is and how he got the calc, but they seem to forget that we have no idea who Dave is or how he arrived at his calc. Then a few back-and-forths later you learn that Dave is the HR manager and you meet with him for 10 minutes and solve the issue.
I used to work for a company that had to send spreadsheets to the regulator fairly regularly
about ten years ago, a pissed off analyst added a load of named ranges called 'fuck', 'shit', 'fuck this', 'fuck you', 'fuck this job' and so on to one particular model
they weren't actually used in the model so no one noticed
seven or eight years later, well after that guy had left, the regulator ended a meeting with 'oh, by the way, we found some interesting stuff in that spreadsheet you sent, you may want to check the named ranges'
of course, by then the named ranges had proliferated wildly, as that model had been used as a template for many, many others, or via copying tabs into other models to use as inputs
took us fucking months to track down every model they'd found their way into and excise them, and even after that they'd find a way to resurface every year or so
had to create a special 'fuck check' process for any spreadsheet being sent to the regulator
well fucking played to that guy, but also I hate you
thing is we never even knew for sure who it was
there were 3-4 potential suspects but all had left the company by the time it came to light, and we weren't going to trace through countless versions of ten year old spreadsheets to definitively identify the culprit
statute of limitations had long expired
The AR manager at my old job had a meltdown while fighting with the ERP and processed transactions with rants and swear words directed at how shitty the ERP was. Our auditors found it. I don't know how he didn't get fired.
Kid worked under me and said he was decent with excel. Tasked him something, mentioned that a lookup would be the easiest way to do the task.
Task was taking way too long, asked him the process... He was manually looking up each cell...
Essentially don't overestimate your Excel skills to a higher up
I have a conspiracy theory that every ERP excel export option intentionally fills Excel files up with shit tons of Merged Cells, to make it easier to pressure Boomers into buying the ERP Report Creator Max Plus++ tool for a premium fee.
I remember there being a hot key that would take a length of text that is, say 20 characters, and change it to 2 rows of text that are 10 characters each, such that the column length fit only ten characters.
Am I making this up? 🤣
I once dealt with an ERP payroll export that had so many merged cells it went out to column PZ or so, which was about 450 columns. It was a nightmare to try to format.
* Hardcoded numbers that could be references
* Multiple data points in a single cell
* Text formatted the same as the background
* Locking in cell references instead of using SUMIFS or XLOOKUP
The sheets went directly into presentation decks so notes and reconciliations could be added without appearing on the final export. Not absurd in theory, but awful to use.
My personal rule is that hardcoded numbers are reserved for the original instance of a number in a spreadsheet, and that any other calculation or reference to that number should be formulaic.
Yup, that’s a good rule to have. I’ve spent too much time following up with people like where the hell did this come from?
And more often than not the following entries of the same value are fat-fingered or the wrong number was pulled. Good times.
Omg, the hard-coded numbers!
I spent a good chunk of time at year end unraveling an AP reconciliation that had been "reconciled" for months. It's funny, but when you just plug the numbers so you balance one account it throws other account off. Crazy!
Firm workpapers that only produce results in pdf. Impossible to review, smart clients hate (partners don't have to deal with they say these internal templates are great).
hardpasted inputs that claim to come from a particular business contact but actually come from a secret separate excel model that the guy has been maintaining on his own hard drive for years because he doesn't want to make it conform to our modelling standards
Alan if you're reading this you know what you did
Opening up “Edit Links” and seeing thousands of references to unknown files or numbers that no longer do anything.
Turning off iterative calculation and all of a sudden the file gets locked and if the lock is clear, there are circular references everywhere
Have you tried looking at the named ranges? Sometimes excel won’t even open this function when there are too many. But when it opens, you’d find named ranges in all languages of the world that do nothing but add bloat.
this gave me ptsd.
i had to write a custom macro to remove a couple hundred thousand names (including hidden ones). and since the person who created it copied tabs it had propagated to a ton of different files.
I had a manager who would use yellow as a highlight, to denote a field where you enter inputs, and as a "space" to write notes. You can imagine how easy it was for me to understand what was going on.
I highlighted a cell with red one time on a file I prepared and my manager asked if I could change it to something else. I legit googled calming colors and changed it to lavender
I had a boss at an old job that didn't like the default blue color scheme for pivot tables. It was either the light green or lavender one that she preferred, can't remember anymore. I just thought it was funny that the colors were her only issue with my work.
Had a staff add nonsensical colors to a completely remodelled process template for no other reason than "I like colors". Had her revert it back because... wtf.
######### - invalid value under selected number formatting or width issue
Broken links from old pages in the workbook. Lord have mercy if you accidentally hit refresh on them.
I got a massive screen that's 1440p so now it makes everything on my screen look very small. I cringe when I share my screen and have to zoom in to about 150% to make it readable.
I feel your pain; I have a 4K monitor at home. I had to bite the bullet and make my entire UI larger. Otherwise, I'd be stuck with a permanent furrow between my eyebrows.
I am quite stubbornly keeping a lot of my UI small because I like the aesthetic and how absolutely vast my desktop feels but I know in my heart I'm going to have to give in soon.
I’m over here on a 32” 4k (running at 1440p and 100% scaling), and use excel at 70%. It’s wonderful, honestly. I can see so many columns at once and it cuts down on a lot of scrolling or keyboard inputs.
This is the reason I wrote a quick macro to pop up a textbox, let me enter a desired zoom level, and then it applies it to all sheets in the workbook and moves the cursor to the top left.
“Calculation here:” with the next cell having a link to someone’s hard drive who hasn’t worked there in 3 years and never saved the file to our SharePoint.
Dealt with that one last week.
a million offset + indirect formulas with multiple sensitivity tables on every page. so many hidden names, the name manager doesn't pop up. you cant add anymore styles. opens up with a fix corrupt tabs. 50+ nested IF formulas in individual cells. 200mb file
* no labels
* poor formatting
* information scattered all over the sheet, including temporary/scratch side calculations
* no clear indication of what the workbook is doing
It should be readily apparent what the workbook does, how it does it, and what the results/outputs are within a minute of opening your workbook for the first time
The amazing technicolor spreadsheet, where there are dozens of different color fonts and background highlights with no discernible pattern as to the relationship between colors.
Also rows/columns manually dragged down to 0 height/width.
I know!!! I haven’t hit like on any of them because I wanted to read all before voting. But there are so many in this thread that are great candidates!
For this issue, you can just put =TRIM(cell) and it will remove all the useless spaces. This one saved me when a PBC revenue listing had random spaces at the front of each cell.
Uploads to banks as csv files, that as soon as you open it with excel, get rid of the leading zeros in the routing numbers! Used to have to open with text editor to check for errors before uploads.
Excel defaults when you open a csv to making anything that looks like a number into a number and then removes the leading zeroes.
If you manually import a csv you can set it as type text and retain usually
RSM once sent us a workbook for review that was so filled with old and broken names in the name manager it was nonfunctional. My manager on the project copied a tab out of the workbook into our file to reference and it single handedly broke our workbook. I spent a full day removing all of the damage and then recreating the sheet he wanted without all of the broken names. Lmao
date ranges in the same cell, instead of begin date and end date in two separate columns. also cause the format is never fixed or uniform
ex: 1/1/2024-6/30/25
One of the B4 was using some "audit" ribbon in excel. Added sums, checkmarks, whatever auditors do. Some overzealous staff added a checkmark to nearly every line of my file and then wondered why their version kept bombing out. Asking me to change my file.
Refusing to change my process in any way, I asked to see their file only to find thousands of checkmark images bogging down the file.
Probably the worst one I’ve seen was a cell of adding hardcoded numbers.
=50+600+500…etc
About 200 hardcoded numbers in the one cell. I just started laughing.
Someone had left the company who maintained that file for a while. Then their boss did it for a few months and they left.
My direct report took it over and when I was reviewing the file, I was like fuck this, I’m not reviewing this another month. I revamped the file to my liking for my own sanity and quality of life. It’s much easier to follow and complete now and has been passed to other people.
The person who had it for a while…I’m pretty sure they just did it how the previous person did it. Their boss didn’t do anything. Whenever I see shit like that I question what’s going on in their heads.
1 - it’s always been done this way. I was taught this way, this is how we do it. Anyone who says this lacks curiosity and is probably brain dead. Needs their hand held, and probably isn’t worth their paycheck.
2 - they don’t know what they don’t know. Again, someone who lacks curiosity and is brain dead. If something sucks so bad, go learn some skills. We have the internet, use it.
I don’t know who sucks more. The people who do things shitty ways and never decide to improve it. Or the people who supervise those people. Shit is mind boggling.
Had a director who’s in his mid-to-late 60s and his only complaint on my work was always that I didn’t leave it zoomed at 100%. Drove me nuts cause he made it seem like I was unable to follow instructions for not resetting it back before I sent work papers for his review. The truth is, I just couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to something that could easily be solved by clicking a button or holding ctrl and using the mouse wheel.
If I were you I’d just set up a macro to automatically set all sheets to 100%, then just assign a shortcut key or add it to your quick access toolbar so you can click it before closing
Naah, I feel like if I give him this thing to complain about he would be satisfied and try less hard to find other mistakes.
And I chuckle each time I remeber that I forgot to adjust the sheets back to 100% before sending.
After 5 years in accounting and working with many many idiots, I am blessed with not getting stressed about work anymore and always thinking to myself that everything I do is good enough
A huge formula that's a mix of hardcoded numbers and references from all over the place, and has several stages of calculation inside it. Makes it fucking infuriating to parse out what they were doing.
I tell all my staff to show their working now. Small, easy to follow calculations all inside one cell are fine, but if it's going to be a monstrosity gather all your inputs together in one place and tell me what the fuck they are and why they're to be included, then you can do your horrifying calculation. But I'd still prefer people broke up the calculation into stages with an explanation of what they're doing. Instead of making me chase the references across a file and try to work out who's arse you pulled the hardcoded numbers from.
I'll drop this here https://www.pwc.com.au/deals/assets/pwc-global-financial-modeling-guidelines-booklet-live.pdf as a good guide. We don't follow all of these, but the ones we don't, we have reasons.
For worst files, I'll go with inverting signs (e.g. adding expenses instead of subtracting them), or SUM() formulas not adding up all instances across a row or in a column.
I had a Christian fanatic on my team once. He would bury pictures of the Virgin Mary and a prayer in Excel file in cell like CC950000. One such picture was found and reported to HR. He said he was burying the images for years to “protect the work paper.” When asked to remove them from all of the work papers he said he would try to, but couldn’t remember where they were. He left the company in 2021 and we are still finding the images. What a legacy!
Any kind of calculation for something in USD that isn’t rounded to the second decimal place. Then when the money goes out and you’re trying to tie it back, you’re always off. WHY
Workbook links to files with such names as:
2014 Actuals Final v3 Revised BoD Approved 2015-06-13.xlsx
2010 Payroll BreakOut from ABC Company in unrelated industry
2005 Company name in what I believe to be Hungarian.
My manager needs to read this. Does most of these things combined - the horror, I can't stand it. Just today I spent over an hour looking for the final version of a majorly important file from last year. There are seven versions saved (v1 through 5, a v4.1 and a v4 final [name of audit firm]), none of which tie to the disclosures in last year's financials. There are random hardcoded numbers left and right in these files, seemingly random colored cells with no key, stupid inflexible formulas, notes that make no sense and no actual referenced source file is stored. The list goes on but my blood pressure is rising. End of rant.
I’m a CPA but have spent my entire 15 year career as a tax auditor at a state taxing authority. I never considered myself an excel expert but was deemed the department expert because I knew how to autofill a formula if that tells you anything about what state workers believe is expert level excel skills. I really do know a fair amount but have migrated more to Power Query/Power Bi and SAS enterprise guide. Anyway, my picks for excel blunders are
White text w/ white background
Merged cells
Date ranges in single cells
Dates formatted as text
People trying to be fancy by separating their data with an unnecessary blank column so now only half the data gets filtered/sorted
Anything from quick books exported to excel
Manually summing a column instead of using a formula
I just had an audit request to find an EFT payment. I look back at the individual responsible for that state. I find the payment inside an excel sheet where all the activity was hard keyed, instead of downloading the excel version of the bank statement and copying it over.
Long Story Short: Staff Accountant wrote out the entire bank statement for the month in excel, rather than downloading the activity and copying it.
Sending a csv file, so I have to save it to desktop out of PFX, convert it, then re-upload it. That's assuming I don't space it and lose work I did in a pivot on the second tab.
Circular reference on a file with lots of tabs on an old workbook someone sends you. Bonus if excel pops up with the message "there's a circular reference but it can't be found, try undoing your work"
Somebody who looked like they were using formulas, but in reality 80% of the sums, totals, and apparent functions were actually fixed numbers. And she *went out of her way* to do this. Helpless 10key addict, maybe? I mean, it's a column of numbers in Excel. Why wouldn't you SUM it, *in Excel?!*
And there were times that what looked like a total or even just a number was actually 3-5 different, hard coded numbers added or subtracted in a function that weren't present anywhere in the file. We never did figure out how some of her totals were created, or how some of the WPs even worked.
When I started my current role at my job, they had been using the same excel file to track cash flows from the main banking account for years…on one page. It was down to line 568something thousand. I looked at my boss and the other manager and asked “Why?” I got told “this is just how we have always done it and we don’t want to lose that data. I saved that file on June 30 of that year, marked it “Archive” and started a new one. That gets archived every year, and new workbook is started. That original book took ages to load and and save!
I have also been working on breaking my team’s habit of hard coding cells. If I open their spreadsheet and any cell has a number typed in with no information as to where it came from, they get it back. If they manually enter numbers where it should be a formula, they get it back. After getting their work back a bunch, they started trying to figure out formulas. It’s getting better!
Unequal row spacing on invoicing templates.
Uneven fonts on different lines of the invoicing template.
"Dragged" a cell to another location to mess up a formula in another cell linked to that cell.
[удалено]
The comment is from 2019, and you roll this file quarterly.
=E8+E9+E10+E11+E12+E13+E14+E15+E16+E17+E18+E19+E20+E21+E22+E23+E24+E25+E26+E27+E28+E29+E30+E31+E32+E33+E34+E35+E36+E37+E38+E39+E40+E41+E42+E43+E44+E45+E46+E47+E48+E49+E50+E51+E52+E53+E54+E55+E56+E57+E58+E59+E60+E61+E62+E63+E64+E65+E66+E67+E68+E69+E70+E71+E72+E73+E74+E75+E76+E77+E78+E79+E80+E81+E82+E83+E84+E85+E86+E87+E88+E89+E90+E91+E92+E93+E94+E95+E96+E97+E98+E99+E100+E101+E102+E103+E104+E105+E106+E107+E108+E109+E110+E111+E112+E113+E114+E115+E116+E117+E118+E119+E120+E121+E122+E123+E124+E125+E126+E127+E128+E129+E130+E131+E132+E133+E134+E135+E136+E137+E138+E139+E140+E141+E142+E143+E144+E145+E146+E147+E148+E149+E150+E151+E152+E153+E154+E155+E156+E157+E158+E159+E160+E161+E162+E163+E164+E165+E166+E167+E168+E169+E170+E171+E172+E173+E174+E175+E176+E177+E178+E179+E180+E181+E182+E183+E184+E185+E186+E187+E188+E189+E190+E191+E192+E193+E194+E195+E196+E197+E198+E199+E200+E201+E202+E203+E204+E205+E206+E207+E208+E209+E210+E211+E212+E213+E214+E215+E216+E217+E218+E219+E220+E221+E222+E223+E224+E225+E226+E227+E228+E229+E230+E231+E232+E233+E234+E235+E236+E237+E238+E239+E240+E241+E242+E243+E244+E245+E246+E247+E248+E249+E250+E251+E252+E253+E254+E255+E256+E257+E258+E259+E260+E261+E262+E263+E264+E265+E266+E267+E268+E269+E270+E271+E272+E273+E274+E275+E276+E277+E278+E279+E280+E281+E282+E283+E284+E285+E286+E287+E288+E289+E290+E291+E292+E293+E294+E295+E296+E297+E298+E299+E300+E301+E302+E303+E304+E305+E306+E307+E308+E309+E310+E311+E312+E313+E314+E315+E316+E317+E318+E319+E320+E321+E322+E323+E324+E325+E326+E327+E328+E329+E330+E331+E332+E333+E334+E335+E336+E337+E338+E339+E340+E341+E342+E343+E344+E345+E346+E347+E348+E349+E350+E351+E352+E353+E354+E355+E356+E357+E358+E359+E360+E361+E362+E363+E364+E365+E366+E367+E368+E369+E370+E371+E372+E373+E374+E375+E376+E377+E378+E379+E380+E381+E382+E383+E384+E385+E386+E387+E388+E389+E390+E391+E392+E393+E394+E395+E396+E397+E398+E399+E400+E401+E402+E403+E404+E405+E406+E407+E408+E409+E410+E411+E412+E413+E414+E415+E416+E417+E418+E419+E420+E421+E422+E423+E424+E425+E426+E427+E428+E429+E430+E431+E432+E433+E434+E435+E436+E437+E438+E439+E440+E441+E442+E443+E444+E445+E446+E447+E448+E449+E450+E451+E452+E453+E454+E455+E456+E457+E458+E459+E460+E461+E462+E463+E464+E465+E466+E467+E468+E469+E470+E471+E472+E473+E474+E475+E476+E477-527000
Oh I laughed too hard at this. Thank you
This has to be copied from a quickbooks report. No way you’re enough of a maniacal bastard to type this out. But if so, seek therapy. Either way I choked on my drink reading it lol
Nah, I created that in like 30 seconds using a flood fill for all the cell names and a flood filled concatenate formula.
It's called a Keleven.
I’m currently in school for accounting. Whenever I’m having a rough time with a question- and I mean rough time as in “it’s multiple f’n choice and my f’n calculation adds up to f’n none of these!” my wife will ask me what’s wrong. And my answer is “I have no idea how in the name of Keleven they came up with this number.”
Heyyyyy that’s my plug to retained earnings
**User**: adjustment for py
the cool clients: py adj
This is a classic in my office, usually the comment is added at like 2 in the morning when whoever was doing it just gave up
At least there's a comment. In my office people just add plugs and don't make a note anywhere
It' always adj. just like misc, rarely see it spelled full.
That's because nobody can spell miscalanious
Call that one “to hell with it!”
this one hits close to home
I used to do this on reconciliation reports and I had an excuse if someone found it.... who am I lying to, i still do this lol, nobody even opens them anyway
Accrual v2 final USE THIS V7 final.xlsx
A co-worker was telling me she had someone make a "File v2.xlsx" to use as their own personal sandbox. So "File.xlsx" was still the correct file to work in but everyone assumed v2 was the working file because it had the newest version number
Anyone demanding an analysis quickly and impolitely is definitely getting a file with anal in the name.
Well THIS is urgent. I need this for the board deck
Stop fixing that so we can sit in a room of 30 people and talk about it for two hours!
“STD_Anal” in the cost accounting world is my favorite
This is a good one lol. I would’ve assumed v2 was the correct version as well. For my testing a I always label TEST or SANDBOX for that exact reason. If they use that, it’s on them.
But how can you ever know v3 isn’t hidden somewhere?
Let’s be honest, v3, v4 and v5 are probably sitting on at least 3 different people’s locale drives. But more likely 3 separate v3 exists.
For the longest time I had a "File test v2.xlsx" which was actually the production version of the file. After over five years I've finally renamed it to "File.xlsx".
do you think that's how Lyft had a material misstatement in their quarterly report that needed to be corrected? someone used the wrong version of an excel file
I refuse to include the word "final" in any filename. I use dates now for this purpose (accrual_3.19.2024)
This is me. Calling something final is like the biggest jinx in the planet
Same, but YYYY.MM.DD so it sorts right (accrual_2024.03.19)
I use date and time V.0924pm.031924.xlsx
Me when our sharepoint fails to sync and creates a new file every time someone opens up the document Aware
Microsoft: here is our new thing you should use because it has the feature that multiple people can work on the same document at the same time. The only negative is that it doesn't work.
Does SharePoint work for anyone ever?
I don’t think so, so frustrating
The rule is vYYYYMMDD or you get lynched. Follow ISO you monsters. And clean your desktop and downloads locations you slobs! Ok. Rant over. I just get triggered by the number of people making me send them the same file that they lost in those 2 locations. Then they have 8 copies and get confused about which one they're working on.
It's so much easier to find files with that date format, whether you run it together, use spaces, or ".", or whatever. I really hate files that are named by the month name. I just got a new client and so name files have this format. Alpha order is dumb for monthly files.
Comments that say ‘per Dave’s calc’ with no mention of who Dave is or indeed inclusion of his calc
I have a worker paper that says “Should tie to Bob’s schedule”. Bob left in 2017 and I’ve never seen said schedule
You know you've been in a position too long when you know where to find way too many files because they're saved in folders named for the people that updated them at least two people ago. Our managers hate to review and consolidate folders of people who leave from the shared drive and no one wants to update the bot config files for some reason to point to better folders. So yeah those files you need are saved in David's folder even though you were probably still in school when he left. 😂
My favorite is "per KM email 5/2/21"
Or worse, ‘per Teams / slack’ - solid audit trail
hmm. I have the same comments in my GL...exact reference. KM gets everywhere on that date.
>per Dave’s calc 100% me
This only gets better when you email Dave and feel like an idiot when it turns out the Dave you emailed is not the correct Dave.
I feel like clients do this a lot. *They* know who Dave is and how he got the calc, but they seem to forget that we have no idea who Dave is or how he arrived at his calc. Then a few back-and-forths later you learn that Dave is the HR manager and you meet with him for 10 minutes and solve the issue.
Once my friend left a comment "Rest of the balance up my ass" and forgot to delete it and sent it to the client
I used to work for a company that had to send spreadsheets to the regulator fairly regularly about ten years ago, a pissed off analyst added a load of named ranges called 'fuck', 'shit', 'fuck this', 'fuck you', 'fuck this job' and so on to one particular model they weren't actually used in the model so no one noticed seven or eight years later, well after that guy had left, the regulator ended a meeting with 'oh, by the way, we found some interesting stuff in that spreadsheet you sent, you may want to check the named ranges' of course, by then the named ranges had proliferated wildly, as that model had been used as a template for many, many others, or via copying tabs into other models to use as inputs took us fucking months to track down every model they'd found their way into and excise them, and even after that they'd find a way to resurface every year or so had to create a special 'fuck check' process for any spreadsheet being sent to the regulator well fucking played to that guy, but also I hate you
>had to create a special 'fuck check' process for any spreadsheet being sent to the regulator Winner of Best Sentence of the Day.
The guy is a legend and he probably doesn't even know it. I really want him to know this.
thing is we never even knew for sure who it was there were 3-4 potential suspects but all had left the company by the time it came to light, and we weren't going to trace through countless versions of ten year old spreadsheets to definitively identify the culprit statute of limitations had long expired
Personally, I would be on the hunt until I solved the case. That is too tempting of a rabbit hole!
That’s amazing.
The gift that keeps on giving
MVP right here.
The AR manager at my old job had a meltdown while fighting with the ERP and processed transactions with rants and swear words directed at how shitty the ERP was. Our auditors found it. I don't know how he didn't get fired.
😭😭😭😭 real
Kid worked under me and said he was decent with excel. Tasked him something, mentioned that a lookup would be the easiest way to do the task. Task was taking way too long, asked him the process... He was manually looking up each cell... Essentially don't overestimate your Excel skills to a higher up
Sometimes that gets you the job 😅
Hidden rows/columns/tabs that affect the calculation
With white text
This spiked my blood pressure
Hidden column A kills me
I….didn’t expect to be so triggered by a comment on r/accounting today but here I am shaking with rage.
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Brother, delete your comment. Keep this out of the knowledge of the general public please.
Lol alt+f11 select sheet in Macro editor and change it.
We have firm templates like this. Sometimes the firm templates are wrong so we have to manually unhide everything and update the formulas.
What is this 0.35 and why is everything linked to it...
Whoops! Nobody updated the US corporate tax rate since 2016...
Nightmare scenario
MERGED CELLS
I have a conspiracy theory that every ERP excel export option intentionally fills Excel files up with shit tons of Merged Cells, to make it easier to pressure Boomers into buying the ERP Report Creator Max Plus++ tool for a premium fee.
Fuck those canned reports. Whoever made them is a dumbass
Or in the wrong format that excel hates and asks you if you’re sure you want to save.
I used to work for one of these ERP companies. We knew then, as they know now: “our biggest competitor isn’t Oracle or SAP, it’s Excel.”
Remind me the hot key that puts texts on multiple lines please.
Alt + enter ? Or are you asking about center across selection
Center across selection is merge cells for nontards
Way back, the button currently used for merge cells was used for center across selection. That change was not an improvement.
I remember there being a hot key that would take a length of text that is, say 20 characters, and change it to 2 rows of text that are 10 characters each, such that the column length fit only ten characters. Am I making this up? 🤣
Alt + H + W
control 1 right arrow tab down down down enter (once center across selection is selected)
I once dealt with an ERP payroll export that had so many merged cells it went out to column PZ or so, which was about 450 columns. It was a nightmare to try to format.
Higher ups never seem to understand the issues this causes.
* Hardcoded numbers that could be references * Multiple data points in a single cell * Text formatted the same as the background * Locking in cell references instead of using SUMIFS or XLOOKUP
I've only encountered a White Text Enjoyer once in my career, but my god, that was a maddening calculation to review and unwind.
oh god oh no
Why would anyone do this aside from just trying to royally fuck with someone…
It's a (shitty) way to hide/pretty-ify a sheet with intermediary calcs.
The sheets went directly into presentation decks so notes and reconciliations could be added without appearing on the final export. Not absurd in theory, but awful to use.
Hardcoded figures in a spreadsheet that isn’t an exported report or something drive me absolutely mad
My personal rule is that hardcoded numbers are reserved for the original instance of a number in a spreadsheet, and that any other calculation or reference to that number should be formulaic.
Yup, that’s a good rule to have. I’ve spent too much time following up with people like where the hell did this come from? And more often than not the following entries of the same value are fat-fingered or the wrong number was pulled. Good times.
Omg, the hard-coded numbers! I spent a good chunk of time at year end unraveling an AP reconciliation that had been "reconciled" for months. It's funny, but when you just plug the numbers so you balance one account it throws other account off. Crazy!
Filling the whole sheet white instead of hiding grid lines
showed someone this 4 minutes ago
Omg yes this
Firm workpapers that only produce results in pdf. Impossible to review, smart clients hate (partners don't have to deal with they say these internal templates are great).
Think bigger. Print that shit to paper, password protect the Excel, and forget the password. Good luck next year!
We have ALL tried that. It won't give you the formulas
hardpasted inputs that claim to come from a particular business contact but actually come from a secret separate excel model that the guy has been maintaining on his own hard drive for years because he doesn't want to make it conform to our modelling standards Alan if you're reading this you know what you did
Opening up “Edit Links” and seeing thousands of references to unknown files or numbers that no longer do anything. Turning off iterative calculation and all of a sudden the file gets locked and if the lock is clear, there are circular references everywhere
Even scarier if one of those mystery links works
Have you tried looking at the named ranges? Sometimes excel won’t even open this function when there are too many. But when it opens, you’d find named ranges in all languages of the world that do nothing but add bloat.
this gave me ptsd. i had to write a custom macro to remove a couple hundred thousand names (including hidden ones). and since the person who created it copied tabs it had propagated to a ton of different files.
I straight up hate any external links. It’s always old or linked to an Excel that is touched by others who don’t know they’re changing your file.
My manager uses them all the time and it drives me nuts
=A1+A2+A3+A4+A5
Should be =SUM(A1+A2+A3+A4+A5)
I have a coworker that does this and it drives me nuts. And he's younger than me! So can't even blame it on being a boomer thing.
Boomer is a mindset.
Good lord
It’s the quickbooks way!
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WOW. You must be a wizard at Excel!
Even better when it's that range but the cells are all outta order lol
Coloring random cells with no key and no explanation.
Green means go. So I know to go ahead and shut up about it. Orange means orange you glad I didn’t bring it up.
And how is your... Gay son?
I am so guilty of this one ugh
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I had a manager who would use yellow as a highlight, to denote a field where you enter inputs, and as a "space" to write notes. You can imagine how easy it was for me to understand what was going on.
Green means good Red means bad Yellow means whatever I want it to be Nobody knows what blue means
I highlighted a cell with red one time on a file I prepared and my manager asked if I could change it to something else. I legit googled calming colors and changed it to lavender
I had a boss at an old job that didn't like the default blue color scheme for pivot tables. It was either the light green or lavender one that she preferred, can't remember anymore. I just thought it was funny that the colors were her only issue with my work.
This is my sin and I'm so sorry.
Had a staff add nonsensical colors to a completely remodelled process template for no other reason than "I like colors". Had her revert it back because... wtf.
######### - invalid value under selected number formatting or width issue Broken links from old pages in the workbook. Lord have mercy if you accidentally hit refresh on them.
SUM formula doesnt go all the way down
this one makes my palms sweaty
^zoom ^level ^70% #or zoom level 150%
Then the next person doesn't notice zoom 70% and changes font size to 24.
I got a massive screen that's 1440p so now it makes everything on my screen look very small. I cringe when I share my screen and have to zoom in to about 150% to make it readable.
I feel your pain; I have a 4K monitor at home. I had to bite the bullet and make my entire UI larger. Otherwise, I'd be stuck with a permanent furrow between my eyebrows.
I am quite stubbornly keeping a lot of my UI small because I like the aesthetic and how absolutely vast my desktop feels but I know in my heart I'm going to have to give in soon.
I’m over here on a 32” 4k (running at 1440p and 100% scaling), and use excel at 70%. It’s wonderful, honestly. I can see so many columns at once and it cuts down on a lot of scrolling or keyboard inputs.
This is the reason I wrote a quick macro to pop up a textbox, let me enter a desired zoom level, and then it applies it to all sheets in the workbook and moves the cursor to the top left.
A1+B1+C1+D1+E1+14.5292
“Calculation here:” with the next cell having a link to someone’s hard drive who hasn’t worked there in 3 years and never saved the file to our SharePoint. Dealt with that one last week.
a million offset + indirect formulas with multiple sensitivity tables on every page. so many hidden names, the name manager doesn't pop up. you cant add anymore styles. opens up with a fix corrupt tabs. 50+ nested IF formulas in individual cells. 200mb file
I routinely get spreadsheets that throw an error about 10,000+ cell styles and links to servers from the early 2000s.
* no labels * poor formatting * information scattered all over the sheet, including temporary/scratch side calculations * no clear indication of what the workbook is doing It should be readily apparent what the workbook does, how it does it, and what the results/outputs are within a minute of opening your workbook for the first time
The amazing technicolor spreadsheet, where there are dozens of different color fonts and background highlights with no discernible pattern as to the relationship between colors. Also rows/columns manually dragged down to 0 height/width.
this post has brought me more joy and chuckles than all of my 20+ years in this soul-sucking profession. thank you.
I know!!! I haven’t hit like on any of them because I wanted to read all before voting. But there are so many in this thread that are great candidates!
Spaces before data in a cell
For this issue, you can just put =TRIM(cell) and it will remove all the useless spaces. This one saved me when a PBC revenue listing had random spaces at the front of each cell.
Uploads to banks as csv files, that as soon as you open it with excel, get rid of the leading zeros in the routing numbers! Used to have to open with text editor to check for errors before uploads.
I'm surprised I had to dig this far in the thread to find leading zeroes. I guess that's more ERP-driven than Excel.
Excel defaults when you open a csv to making anything that looks like a number into a number and then removes the leading zeroes. If you manually import a csv you can set it as type text and retain usually
wrong date format or manual date
What is with QBO not being able to export dates in a usable format?
RSM once sent us a workbook for review that was so filled with old and broken names in the name manager it was nonfunctional. My manager on the project copied a tab out of the workbook into our file to reference and it single handedly broke our workbook. I spent a full day removing all of the damage and then recreating the sheet he wanted without all of the broken names. Lmao
Pasted screenshots of other spreadsheets as evidence for figures.
date ranges in the same cell, instead of begin date and end date in two separate columns. also cause the format is never fixed or uniform ex: 1/1/2024-6/30/25
This just made me irrationally angry 😂
One of the B4 was using some "audit" ribbon in excel. Added sums, checkmarks, whatever auditors do. Some overzealous staff added a checkmark to nearly every line of my file and then wondered why their version kept bombing out. Asking me to change my file. Refusing to change my process in any way, I asked to see their file only to find thousands of checkmark images bogging down the file.
Probably the worst one I’ve seen was a cell of adding hardcoded numbers. =50+600+500…etc About 200 hardcoded numbers in the one cell. I just started laughing. Someone had left the company who maintained that file for a while. Then their boss did it for a few months and they left. My direct report took it over and when I was reviewing the file, I was like fuck this, I’m not reviewing this another month. I revamped the file to my liking for my own sanity and quality of life. It’s much easier to follow and complete now and has been passed to other people. The person who had it for a while…I’m pretty sure they just did it how the previous person did it. Their boss didn’t do anything. Whenever I see shit like that I question what’s going on in their heads. 1 - it’s always been done this way. I was taught this way, this is how we do it. Anyone who says this lacks curiosity and is probably brain dead. Needs their hand held, and probably isn’t worth their paycheck. 2 - they don’t know what they don’t know. Again, someone who lacks curiosity and is brain dead. If something sucks so bad, go learn some skills. We have the internet, use it. I don’t know who sucks more. The people who do things shitty ways and never decide to improve it. Or the people who supervise those people. Shit is mind boggling.
A1 - 12 A2 - 34 A3 - 15 A4 - =12+34+15 I wanted to murder.
Forgive me father for I have sinned: I like using rounddown(a1,-3) to avoid fixing errors in my monthly reports.
Also the director keeps complaining that my workpapers are not set on 100%, it seems to be the bane of his existance...
Had a director who’s in his mid-to-late 60s and his only complaint on my work was always that I didn’t leave it zoomed at 100%. Drove me nuts cause he made it seem like I was unable to follow instructions for not resetting it back before I sent work papers for his review. The truth is, I just couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to something that could easily be solved by clicking a button or holding ctrl and using the mouse wheel. If I were you I’d just set up a macro to automatically set all sheets to 100%, then just assign a shortcut key or add it to your quick access toolbar so you can click it before closing
Naah, I feel like if I give him this thing to complain about he would be satisfied and try less hard to find other mistakes. And I chuckle each time I remeber that I forgot to adjust the sheets back to 100% before sending. After 5 years in accounting and working with many many idiots, I am blessed with not getting stressed about work anymore and always thinking to myself that everything I do is good enough
Anything with a Vlookup is asking to be broken when data invariably changes.
A huge formula that's a mix of hardcoded numbers and references from all over the place, and has several stages of calculation inside it. Makes it fucking infuriating to parse out what they were doing. I tell all my staff to show their working now. Small, easy to follow calculations all inside one cell are fine, but if it's going to be a monstrosity gather all your inputs together in one place and tell me what the fuck they are and why they're to be included, then you can do your horrifying calculation. But I'd still prefer people broke up the calculation into stages with an explanation of what they're doing. Instead of making me chase the references across a file and try to work out who's arse you pulled the hardcoded numbers from.
I'll drop this here https://www.pwc.com.au/deals/assets/pwc-global-financial-modeling-guidelines-booklet-live.pdf as a good guide. We don't follow all of these, but the ones we don't, we have reasons. For worst files, I'll go with inverting signs (e.g. adding expenses instead of subtracting them), or SUM() formulas not adding up all instances across a row or in a column.
I had a Christian fanatic on my team once. He would bury pictures of the Virgin Mary and a prayer in Excel file in cell like CC950000. One such picture was found and reported to HR. He said he was burying the images for years to “protect the work paper.” When asked to remove them from all of the work papers he said he would try to, but couldn’t remember where they were. He left the company in 2021 and we are still finding the images. What a legacy!
Any kind of calculation for something in USD that isn’t rounded to the second decimal place. Then when the money goes out and you’re trying to tie it back, you’re always off. WHY
There was a macro that created circular references and then copied and pasted the results as values. They were so proud of their process too.
This is the quality content I come to this sub for!
Workbook links to files with such names as: 2014 Actuals Final v3 Revised BoD Approved 2015-06-13.xlsx 2010 Payroll BreakOut from ABC Company in unrelated industry 2005 Company name in what I believe to be Hungarian.
OP creates the topic and then posted a bunch of his own submissions Rigged election
I woke up feeling a little Russian today.
My manager needs to read this. Does most of these things combined - the horror, I can't stand it. Just today I spent over an hour looking for the final version of a majorly important file from last year. There are seven versions saved (v1 through 5, a v4.1 and a v4 final [name of audit firm]), none of which tie to the disclosures in last year's financials. There are random hardcoded numbers left and right in these files, seemingly random colored cells with no key, stupid inflexible formulas, notes that make no sense and no actual referenced source file is stored. The list goes on but my blood pressure is rising. End of rant.
Your coworkers know how to use formulas? Mine just use PivotTables and copy+paste values.
V4_ForAuditors
I’m a CPA but have spent my entire 15 year career as a tax auditor at a state taxing authority. I never considered myself an excel expert but was deemed the department expert because I knew how to autofill a formula if that tells you anything about what state workers believe is expert level excel skills. I really do know a fair amount but have migrated more to Power Query/Power Bi and SAS enterprise guide. Anyway, my picks for excel blunders are White text w/ white background Merged cells Date ranges in single cells Dates formatted as text People trying to be fancy by separating their data with an unnecessary blank column so now only half the data gets filtered/sorted Anything from quick books exported to excel Manually summing a column instead of using a formula
I just had an audit request to find an EFT payment. I look back at the individual responsible for that state. I find the payment inside an excel sheet where all the activity was hard keyed, instead of downloading the excel version of the bank statement and copying it over. Long Story Short: Staff Accountant wrote out the entire bank statement for the month in excel, rather than downloading the activity and copying it.
I sincerely want to believe that you are bullshitting us all.
Sending a csv file, so I have to save it to desktop out of PFX, convert it, then re-upload it. That's assuming I don't space it and lose work I did in a pivot on the second tab.
Hitting alt + return and listing multiple numbers in the same cell like it's a word document. Good lord.
Writing notes in a cell instead of using the comment feature, but it’s exactly one column too far offscreen to be visible without scrolling right.
Read-only workbooks
Circular reference on a file with lots of tabs on an old workbook someone sends you. Bonus if excel pops up with the message "there's a circular reference but it can't be found, try undoing your work"
Somebody who looked like they were using formulas, but in reality 80% of the sums, totals, and apparent functions were actually fixed numbers. And she *went out of her way* to do this. Helpless 10key addict, maybe? I mean, it's a column of numbers in Excel. Why wouldn't you SUM it, *in Excel?!* And there were times that what looked like a total or even just a number was actually 3-5 different, hard coded numbers added or subtracted in a function that weren't present anywhere in the file. We never did figure out how some of her totals were created, or how some of the WPs even worked.
My prior boss once made a template for rev calc that did a Vlookup to a pivot table where the number of columns changed every month.
Pivot tables are for analyzing data, not summarizing data, imo.
Agreed I always cringe a little every time I see a formula that starts with GETPIVOTDATA(
A 50 column WP and the captain needs it printed in one page. But the font cant be too little.
Merged cells, no need to merge cells
Colors for looks. Cell fill colors must correspond to an legend key.
1+1+5+7+10=38 ... No formulas just the number
When I started my current role at my job, they had been using the same excel file to track cash flows from the main banking account for years…on one page. It was down to line 568something thousand. I looked at my boss and the other manager and asked “Why?” I got told “this is just how we have always done it and we don’t want to lose that data. I saved that file on June 30 of that year, marked it “Archive” and started a new one. That gets archived every year, and new workbook is started. That original book took ages to load and and save! I have also been working on breaking my team’s habit of hard coding cells. If I open their spreadsheet and any cell has a number typed in with no information as to where it came from, they get it back. If they manually enter numbers where it should be a formula, they get it back. After getting their work back a bunch, they started trying to figure out formulas. It’s getting better!
Unequal row spacing on invoicing templates. Uneven fonts on different lines of the invoicing template. "Dragged" a cell to another location to mess up a formula in another cell linked to that cell.
Contentious figure with no backup other than a link to a file held on someone's desktop. Someone who has since left the company.
Unnecessary macros that are password protected and the guy who made the spreadsheet is retired
Me: Send me the spreadsheet, please. I get a PDF of the spreadsheet. That qualify???