I have two Excel worksheets. One is the summary document, the other
is the cash flow. The cash flow is out by $0.02, because of who excel
rounds up or down. When I do individual rounds it is out.
You are not being very precise. But by my interpretation, the
"individual rounds" should provide the correct answer. It should be
the other way that is off, not the "individual rounds".
Can you assist with how to get the two sheets to correspond.
You are doing the correct thing by rounding every computation in a
financial spreadsheet. Alternatively, you might set the Calculation
option "Precision as displayed" (Excel 2003). But I consider that
risky if you make a mistake in some formats, particularly in cells
with constants (you permanently lose the increased precision).
The rounding is needed to ameliorate side-effects due to binary
computer arithmetic. You might think there should be none if all
constants are represented to the penny and you only do add and
subtract. But even in that case, small computational errors can creep
in and have a small effect if you are adding or subtracting enough
numbers. (What is "enough" is difficult to predict.)
Rounding does not completely eliminate the binary computer artifacts.
That is impossible to do. But it appears that Excel does ensure that
the rounded result, displayed with the same precision, exactly matches
the value if you had entered it as a constant. At least that has been
my experience, looking at the binary representation.
I was not able to round the total amount from the cash flow
Why not? Please post the formulas that do not work for you.
if this works please provide formula.
That depends on what your original formula looks like. Two examples:
=ROUND(expression, 2)
=ROUND(SUM(range), 2)
