Membership FeesHaving completed my research into the membership fees of different organisations, I began developing my Cash Flow forecast. I have created this document to show the development process.

By Sarah Corthorne 11ChiS

Developing the Membership Fees• I have developed the membership fee data given on the DiDA

website using various skills on Microsoft Excel: Formulae, 3D referencing, Absolute referencing, IF statements and conditional formatting.

• The following slides show how I did each step...

The print screen of my final cash flow forecast is shown below:

1. Formulae

• To develop the spreadsheet to show income and outgoings for each month of the next year, I had to use formulae.

• E.g. To find the total membership costs for the platinum, gold and silver adult members I needed to multiply the cost for one membership by the number of members.

• Now, if you click ‘show formulae’, the formulae shows up:

Formula:3 (total cost) = 2 (cost for one member) * 1 (total number of members)

1 2 3

2. 3D Referencing• To transfer data from the cells on sheet 1 (this sheet is shows

the data given from the DiDA website) to my developed spreadsheet, I have used a skill called ‘3D referencing’.

• This involves taking data from another sheet on the document and using it for your current sheet. E.g.:

1. Press ‘=’in the desired cell.

2. Select the needed sheet.

3. Click the cell which contains the desired information.

4. Press enter, and the data will have been entered into the desired cell!

NOW, if you click on the option ‘show formula’, you can see the exact formula I used!

3. Absolute Referencing• I have used absolute referencing to ensure that after having

used 3D referencing, I can drag the cell across so that all of the desired cells on my row show the same formula. This saves time when making a spreadsheet. The steps are shown below:

1. Select a cell that contains 3D-referenced data

2. Press the ‘F4’ button in this cell’s formula bar.

3. Drag this cell across the other cells in the row.

4. Now, if you click ‘show formulas’, we can see that the 3D-referencing formula is copied across to the other cells, which makes developing the spreadsheet less time consuming and more efficient!

4. IF STATEMENTS

Having finished my 3D referencing, absolute referencing and ‘IF’ statements, my spreadsheet now looks like this:

To show the cash-flow surplus/deficit, I have used an ‘IF STATEMENT’ for each month. This involves subtracting the total outgoings from the total income, shown by this example:

5. Conditional Formatting• I have used the skill ‘conditional formatting’ to make my spreadsheet more clear and user friendly, by colouring in the different cells.• For example:

I coloured ‘Surplus’ cells green (because surplus is good) and ‘Deficit’ cells red (because deficit is bad).

I have given the title cells darker colours, and I have left the cells with data in them clear – doing this makes it easier to see what is data and what is a heading.

I have highlighted the cell which will show my total Net Cash Flow (whether or not I am able to break even) so that it is very visible.

Testing!• To make sure that I have used the correct formulae

and that I have achieved the expected answers, I have performed a few tests on my Cash Flow Forecast spreadsheet.• I will perform 3 tests to check that my spreadsheet is

working. • The following slides show the evidence of my testing

for each of the tests.

Test 1:• For my first test, I will use the ‘show formula’ option.• Doing this will demonstrate whether or not I have used the correct formulae and will prove that I have not just typed in my values:

• We can see all of my correct, working formula, so this test has proved that my spreadsheet is fully functional.

All I had to do was click the ‘show formula’ button (as shown), and excel changes each cell to show the formula that was typed in in order to reach those values.

This is what happened:

• For my second test I will reduce all of the outgoings on the separate ‘Costs’ sheet to £0, and then also reduce all the memberships to £0.

• I should then see that all the values in my cash flow forecast are zero; doing this will prove that my spread sheet is correct.

• Changing my values to £0 on one sheet has changed the total net cash flow on my other sheet to £0, which demonstrates that I have used 3D referencing in my spreadsheet as changes to cells on the first sheet affects the cells on my second sheet. This proves that my formulae are correct.

Test 2:

These print screens show my testing process – this is what happened:

1. I will change my number of silver memberships to 5, which should give me £115 income (because £23 multiplied by 5 = £115).

2. I will put £10 in the ‘total outgoings’ category.3. My spreadsheet should find that the total Net Cash Flow is £105 (…

because £115 - £10 = £105).

Step 1:

Step 2:

Step 3:

The print screens below show evidence of my testing process – this is what happened:

Having completed these tests, I can conclude that my formulae are correct because my predictions for what would happen with correct formula were true when I was testing my own spreadsheet.

Test 3:

Now that I have finished developing and testing my cash flow forecast, I am ready to start trying to change the WildCare Kids and WildCare Teens fees in a way that will enable me to break even.

The print screen below shows how the costs started out before I tried to make the charity break even:

Proposals

My initial Total Net Cash Flow:

I made the number of members for both WildCare Teens and WildCare Kids 1500 which seems like an appropriate, realistic amount of members as there wouldn’t be as many child members as adult members.

Proposal 1:

My first proposal was to make the Teen fees £20, and the Kids fees £15 – these seemed like fairly reasonable prices.

This left my Net Cash Flow total as £9,871 which wasn’t nearly close enough to breaking even, so I decided to try another combination of costs.

Proposal 2:My second proposal was to leave the Teen fee at £20, and to lower the Kids fee to £10– again, these seemed like fairly reasonable and realistic prices.

This left my total Net Cash Flow at £2,371 which was considerably lower than the number created for proposal 1 (£9,871), but still not close enough to £0 to be sufficient.

Final total Net Cash Flow:

Proposal 3:• Finally, I decided to change the platinum cost to £29, the gold cost to £26 and the silver cost to £23. Raising these costs enables me to raise the Teens and Kids costs (because they should realistically be lower than the adult membership costs). • I then made the Teens cost £18.25 and the Kids cost £10.20. This lowered the total Net Cash Flow cost to £46. • Trying to this figure down to £0 would involve me making the fees unrealistic amounts (e.g. £25.33), and as £46 is sufficiently close enough to breaking even (£0), I have left it as it is.

Final total Net Cash Flow:

Feedback• By this point, my cash flow forecast looked like this:

• I decided to ask for feedback from my test buddy, to see if I could improve it any further.

I have acted on my feedback by doing an IF statement for my final column.

My test-buddy feedback was:

“I am very impressed with this spread sheet.

However, I noticed that you haven’t done an IF statement in the final column; this makes it unclear whether it is a surplus or deficit. Therefore, to improve you should extend the IF statement to the final column, for increased clarity of your cash flow forecast.

…so I went away and extended the column – as shown below!

Below is my FINAL cash flow forecast!