learning excel - Pivot tables

Pivot tables are great for analysing large sets of data. Typically the data for Pivot tables comes from a database, and is formatted accordingly. So for instance if you have a large amount of transactional data, lets say volume of essential oils processed in a year, broken down by catagories, prices, batches, etc - you may need to answer an indepth question like:

How many cimmamon oil batches were processed in a specific set of months?

....and there may be many, many more complex questions to be answered. Pivot tables allows you to quickly access the data, without the hassle of having to spend large amounts of time setting up the data and manipulating it.

So PivotTables might be useful for budgeting purposes, if you have the data in the correct database type format. They can answer questions, but probably not the best solution for actually creating the budget sheets with.

Richard