Michelle, Who is a sweet lady and regular reader of the blog sent me this question via e-mail. (aside: why is she a sweet lady? Because she saw the new cell post and sent me pics of her son and told Jo and me are about to encounter most amazing experiences of our lives 🙂 )
I handle the invoices we give to our customers (we build and sell furniture), but sometimes such customers can be stores or just regular folks that come directly to us.
For the stores I have to give an invoice that has a NCF number which is a tax related number that increases the cost in 16% but stores require this number which must be unrepeatable. Each company has a “list” of numbers that they can provide their customers. Regular customers (not stores) have no interest in this number, obviously trying to avoid the 16% increase in the price!
So far what I did was create a database of our customers with the basic info of each one. Many of our customers keep buying so this way I just have to place myself in the invoice and select from a list and with a simple vlookup I get the rest of the customer’s information: phone, address and RNC number.
Now… the RNC is the number that tells me if it’s a store or not. Stores must have their registration number (RNC) in order to receive invoices with NCF (boring, I know… I’m gonna get to the point in a sec). Ok, so if I choose my dear customer “Chandoo Enterprises” and this store has RCN, then I automatically need for the invoice to pull form “my list” of government assigned NCF numbers, the next one in line. If in my previous invoice (say invoice 1455) to another store I used NCF number A010010010100000002 (that’s how they look) for Chandoo Enterprises -invoice #1456- I am going to need the next number in line A010010010100000003 and so on. Now, say that my next invoice (1457) is not to a store but to John Doe, for him I don’t want an NCF number to show.
I keep thinking that there’s a very stupid and simple way to do this but I just can’t nail it!! My problem is to get to a formula that will work only when the RNC field has information and therefore avoiding NCF numbers to appear on non-store customers (not so complicated I think) and that it chooses the next NCF number in line, no repeating… this is the part that I have no idea how to do!! Is there a way to solve this without using VBA? VBA is scary!! Hehehe
Okay, that is a big question, but may be we can come up with a small solution for it.
If I understand it correct, Michelle is looking for something like this:
So, in order to generate such numbers,
- First we will make 2 named ranges – customer_list and ncf_numbers. You know what they mean.
- Now, we will enter the customer name in column B, and based on that we will fetch RNC number in column C.
- For this, we will use VLOOKUP () formula. The simplest formula looks like this: VLOOKUP(B5,customer_list,4,FALSE)
- But, simplest formula also has problems – it doesn’t handle errors and can return 0 when the RNC number field is blank. So we will add some fat to it, mainly on the front side. It now looks like this: =IF(ISERROR(VLOOKUP(B5,customer_list,4,FALSE)),””, VLOOKUP(B5,customer_list,4,FALSE))
- In the third column, we will fetch the next available NCF number if the customer has an RNC. For this, we use a simple IF() and COUNTIF() formulas along with INDEX() formula. We write: =IF(OR(C5=””,C5=0),””,INDEX(ncf_numbers,COUNTIF($C$5:C5,”RNC*”))).
- Above formula simple fetches the nth NCF number from the named range ncf_numbers if RNC number is not blank.
- That is all. We now have a simple logic to generate invoice numbers that suit tax authority’s whims and fancies.
Download the example workbook:
You can download the excel tutorial workbook and see how you can generate such invoice numbers yourself.
More material if you are getting stuck with formulas
50+ Excel Formulas – Explained in plain English, Excel formula tutorials, Excel array formula examples
23 Responses to “Learn Top 10 Excel Features”
What it looks like if excel without formula?? 🙂
It would be not excel it would just be fancy tables in which you could just use power point. (Chandoo) would Access be an alternative?
Awesome piece of work!!!
Great article.
Chandoo - my biggest interest in the article was the awesome word-graphic at the top - where did you go to get it done into a shape?
@Rich.. thank you. I used http://www.tagxedo.com/ to generate this word cloud. I took all the comments in the original post, pasted them in tagxedo website and set up the shape etc.
Awesome Chandoo.. You need always needs coffee to start up with. BTW , how did u created the Heart Shaped picture filled with High Repetitive text in it .. Please put it on your Next blog ...
Chandoo, good article. I’ve added a link to it from Connexion – our collection of the most useful and interesting spreadsheet-related articles from the web. See http://www.i-nth.com/resources/connexion
Hi,
Just one small question. Where the hell have been I in the past for not discovering this website sooner?
I've lost a job interview recently where even though I had the subject knowledge, I was not upto their mark in Excel.
Thank you for all the free tips, guidance and for creating this forum environment.
[PS: I've just been through the site for the 1st time, and have signed up for the newsletter. You can expect pretty stupid questions from me soon]
Hy Chandoo, you always inspire me with to explore something new in excel. This data structure table is only for excel 2007 or compatible to 2010. I recently installed latest excel version 2013 in my System and experience problems regarding operating according to previous one. I'm waiting your article relates to that excel version.
Thanks
Awesome article Mr. Chandoo and that is a awesome heart shaped pic you created. Great tips as well.
[...] Learn Top 10 Excel Features | Chandoo.org – Learn Microsoft Excel Online. [...]
Chandoo is awesome..
Thanks, i got better, And i always get 90.50 in my grade card but now i get 96.50 i improved because of the tutorials you gave, Thank You Very Much Chandoo Guy.
Hi chandoo, i am intersted in seeing the video or step by step done procedure of analysing the comments and presenting in the data percentage steps. I think this one would be first step in finding out how generally happens data calculation. Thank you.
As well i would like to know how to get that black shape art of your face which i see in chandoo. I am interested in making it for me.
Nice to see the features considered by Excel users to be most useful. It might be a good idea to also analyze StackOverflow Excel questions to see what keywords appear most often.
Here are my top 10 Excel Features (for advanced users):
http://www.analystcave.com/excel-10-top-excel-features/
Thanks a ton for this it totally helped with my homework ????
Very good effort
Thank you for this. Lots of learning in the links you've provided for this septuagenarian.
Pls send me new post
Dude, your humor ? ?
Loved your work.
Hello Sir,
I am Sanjeev Khakre and i from Indore City, India , I am your big follower and i have watch your videos and learnt a lots of excel trick or function and many more . thanks so much for all of your excellent support.
Your excel knowledge is real awesome.
Thanks
Sanjeev
Your work is excellent but pls willing to know more details about the features of microsoft excel
Chandoo Would Access be a better alternative than VB?