A market for customised spreadsheets?

Damoclese

I've been trying to come up with ways of making extra income, but the only real tools i have to work with are general computer knowledge and fairly advanced excel knowledge.

I have helped friends, family and neighbours with problems they ahd with their computers and showing them how to do certain things, but am not a programmer or have an IT background so not sure i could offer more than basic guidance with this.

With regards excel, i've created complex workbooks using formulas and written macros to gether data from websites. Not had an excel query i couldn's resolve, but not sure how or where to market this.

Any ideas?

What companies/businesses would be looking for spreadsheet assistance?
What type of thing would they be looking for?
Would it be accounts based and expect me to have ready made workbooks for this?

Really no idea where to start with this or what would be required. If anyone has any ideas or advice i would be most grateful.

I've tried the freelance sites such as freelancer, but it's hard to compete with people who will do a 4 hour job for $10.

braken2000

Why dont you make a website and see if you get any responses from it?

That is what I am doing.

braken2000

Sorry, I might want to try answeing your questions too, it is Friday so please forgive me.

1. Any company would look for this type of thing. Unless you state that you specialise in say the Printing Industry, or accounts etc.

2. They could be looking for anything. Usually something that will save time, i can think of one thing that I could have done with before, but dont need it now. If you can offer a bespoke service, along-side some pre-made solutions that could help.

3. I doubt much accounts departments etc would use Excel majorly. It is all based on Quicken/Sage/Pegassus etc. It is all done for them by the company they use. But that does not mean that you wont have the opportunity to do it.

I hope this helps ...

jackomdj

Bracken2000 can I disagree with your statement on accounts depts needing excel experience...I work in the supplier accounts department of a major retailer & my role is basically writing excel reports to eliminate manual tasks within the department...using all the usual excel stuff - lookups, sumifs, macro's etc. Although I only work part time I could work full time & still be working flat out!

I posted a long time ago (3 1/2 yrs when I was on maternity leave) onto some job boards and had no responses.

I have often thought about where I could earn additional income via my skills.

Good luck
Nicky

braken2000

The Accounts department where I work (A school) does not use them at all. I know because i am ICT Techie and they just use Sage, it does all the reporting etc for them. It was the same in my previous jobs too. Most departments, be it accounting, shipping etc are trying to get rid of seperate systems and worksheets etc and roll them into one global system accross the network, hence why Sage has the lead on this one.

I dont disagree with you completely jockomdj, smaller companies would probabaly not want to fork out the expense for Sage and keep it on Excel. Damoclese, why dont you aim at smaller companies?

What about going to somewhere like Kelly service and see if they need experienced Excel/VBA people. They are usually screaming out for techies, might be worth a try.

Damoclese

Thanks for the replies.

I probably should try to focus on smaller companies, but as i am hoping to do this in my free time while still keeping my current job, not too sure how to make it work. Might try a few local ads and see if there's any response.

I should probably sign up to kelly's or something to get a better paid job than my current one, but can't really afford to for a while yet.

No idea how to create a webpage so that's something to look at later methinks.

jackomdj

I guess it depends upon the size of the company on how they use (or want to use) these systems. Within my company we use excel to do such a varied amout of tasks, everything from promotional analysis, creating html pages for 500+ stores for their store P&L's (at the press of a button), variance analysis, reporting tolerances...

Prior to this role I worked in the finance department of a University & again we used excel extensively for analysis & reporting in conjunction with our accounting package. I think most finance packages can do the basics but for detailed analytical work you need to use something like excel.

I hope you find someone who can make use of your skills. I think the problem is often people don't know what can be done automatically so don't even think they need something else. It is only when they see what you can do that they realise how much can be done!!

raeble

braken2000 wrote: »

3. I doubt much accounts departments etc would use Excel majorly. It is all based on Quicken/Sage/Pegassus etc. It is all done for them by the company they use. But that does not mean that you wont have the opportunity to do it.

I hope this helps ...

I have to disagree with this. I don't know where you work but in every single accounts department I've worked in we've used Excel - a small charity, a university, a government department. Excel isn't used in isolation - we've used it in conjunction with the finance system. Even when I wasn't in the accounts department we still used Excel for basic things. My current employer has just issued an edict that everyone must be trained on Excel. I'm training to be an accounting technician and everyone in my class uses excel at work - this ranges from large multi-national to small practices.

To the original poster - have you considered teaching Excel? There are lots of people who need to learn how to use this - and some of those training companies charge a small fortune for a days tuition. Do you have any excel qualifications that you can wave about? I know that if you take the advanced ECDL that gives you the right to teach that qualification.

Damoclese

I'll have a look at ECDL raeble - thanks

I looked at getting training on MOUS but this isn't on any distance learning courses yet or even evening courses where i live. Don't have any formal training, just learned as i went along, although i do training for my current employer (as an admin assistant )

I don't have any accounting knowledge so it may be a little tricky to do cashflow or other workbooks like that without being shown step by step what is required - still, at least i'm cheap :rotfl:

braken2000

ECDL is interesting. You can get it fairly easily, but to teach and sometimes invigilate you have to be with a registered centre. You can set up your own centre, although I know this is expensive. Where I work wanted to do this and after extensive "chatting" with the bosses and BSC it is too much hoop-jumping. If there is a college that is wanting teachers for it then go for it, but other than that, it is hard to get into.

Also, maybe it is just me and the places I have worked at that dont use Excel heavily. I am not denying they dont use, but they only use it for raw data, not to perform anything major.

Grass_Stained_Feet

I miss-red the title as bedsheets, thought, what a wicked idea! And then wondered why the first post was about excel...:rotfl: