CP028: How to tell business logic & rules to Excel?

In the 28th session of Chandoo.org podcast, let’s figure out how to express business rules & logic to Excel.

What is in this session?

What good are spreadsheets if they can’t solve business problems?

But we all struggle when it comes to modeling real world business conditions in Excel. For example, if you have below business rule to decide how much discount to offer a customer,

• If the customer bought 3 or more times previously and offer 15% discount
• If the customer bought 1 or 2 times previously AND customer’s age is >40, offer 10% discount
• If the customer visited our New York store between 6PM-9PM offer 5% discount
• Else no discount

How would you go about modeling these in Excel?

That is our topic for this podcast session.

In this podcast, you will learn

• The challenge of modeling business logic & rules in Excel
• My struggles with such formulas in early days
• 4 features of Excel that can help you with this.
• 1. Logical formulas
  • AND
  • OR
  • NOT
  • XOR
• 2. Support formulas
  • IF
  • IFERROR
  • CHOOSE
• 3. Information formulas
  • IS functions
• 4. Operators
  • Brackets
  • +*- operators
• Example business rules & how to write formulas for them
• Conclusions

Listen to this session

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Click here to download the MP3 file.

Links & Resources mentioned in this podcast

Logical formulas – Syntax & Examples:

• AND
• OR
• NOT
• XOR

Support functions & concepts:

• IF formula – tutorial & examples
• Excel operators – an overview
• IFERROR formula
• CHOOSE formula

Advanced business rules & scenarios:

• Advanced SUMPRODUCT queries
• SUMIFS formula for dates in a range

Homework for you:

• Write a formula to check if 2 dates are in same month
• Write a formula to check if few cells have same value
• An IF formula challenge for you
• Can you calculate sales commission?

Transcript of this session:

Download this podcast transcript [PDF].

What challenges do you face when modeling business rules / logic?

When I was learning Excel, I struggled a few years understanding the concept of logical functions. Of course I was in college, so I had all the time in world to explore and learn.

What about you? Do you write formulas that model real world logic? Where do you struggle? Please share your thoughts & inputs in comments section so that I can help you better.

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