I noticed that the President of North Star Records was using big paper spreadsheets to develop income and expense projection. He needed to make decisions about how many CDs to produce for a given project, for example, and wanted to project the break even point and how much profit or loss he could expect based on number of units sold.

I worked with him closely and taught him how to use Excel. It took him out of his comfort zone at first, but soon he was quite happy to no longer be using paper sheets and his hand calculator.

Based on his paper spreadsheets I developed a system of 13 interdependent spreadsheets with the various cost centers, inventory, expenses, etc. The spreadsheets were scripted so that a change in one would update the appropriate summary items elsewhere.

This system allowed the executives at the record label to easily propose 'what if?' scenarios and to plan more carefully. Over time we were able to improve the quality of the Income/Expense Projections system by comparing our projections with actual income and expense data and tweaking the system's variables accordingly.

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