I have finally figured out what if my final number on a project is off, one place to look is if I accidentally added instead of subtracted, or vice versa. Or, to use accounting lingo, I have to check if I accidentally debited something that should have been credited, or vice versa.
If you debit instead of credit, the final number will be off by twice the amount you accidentally debited, which makes it hard to find the cause of the error, especially if there’s more than one.
But, after making the same mistake four times in my current Excel project (for advanced financial), and once this week at work, I finally–on the fifth time I made that mistake on my project–remembered to check if I had put a number in the wrong column, and voila, my final total magically (because it’s Excel) became what it was supposed to be.
There is no greater joy than having a final total come out right, or making a correction and getting a stubborn balance sheet to balance.
