Commercial rounding in Excel made easy

Commercial rounding in Excel is a fundamental skill for anyone working in controlling or sales. A precise presentation of numbers can be crucial in communicating clear and correct results. In this guide, you will learn how to apply different rounding methods in Excel. For this purpose, we will take a look at the functions that Excel provides to effectively round values.

Key Takeaways

• You can round commercially in Excel as well as to the next multiples of tens, hundreds, thousands, or specific currency amounts.
• The relevant functions for this are ROUND, ROUNDUP, ROUNDDOWN, and MROUND.
• Commercial rounding is useful to simplify results and ensure better understandability.

Step-by-Step Guide

Let's now go through the individual steps for executing commercial rounding in Excel.

1. Basics of Rounding in Excel

Open the Excel file you will use for practice. In our example, we are using the file "invoicepractice.xlsx," which already contains a price list. Here, some values are displayed in various unrounded ways.

2. Commercial Rounding

To round values commercially, you use the ROUND function. This function takes two arguments: the value you want to round and the number of decimal places you want to round to. To round to whole numbers, you can use =ROUND(B2; 0), where B2 is the cell reference of the value to be rounded.

When you drag the formula down, you will see that all values are correctly rounded to whole numbers. This involves rounding down or up in the middle depending on the rules of commercial rounding.

3. Rounding to a Specific Number of Decimal Places

If you want to change the number of decimal places, you can simply adjust the ROUND function. To round to one decimal place, you write =ROUND(B2; 1).

Now the values are rounded according to the new specification. You will notice that some numbers are now rounded to a different value than when rounding to the whole number, allowing for fine-tuning.

4. Rounding to Tens, Hundreds, and Thousands

Excel also allows you to round to tens, hundreds, or thousands. To round to the nearest ten, you use =ROUND(B2; -1).

If you want the value to be rounded to the nearest hundred, the function =ROUND(B2; -2) is the right approach. For thousand values, you use =ROUND(B2; -3).

Depending on your needs, you will now see how the values are rounded to the desired level. This is particularly helpful for making large numbers more understandable.

5. Rounding Up and Down

In addition to commercial rounding, there are also the functions ROUNDUP and ROUNDDOWN, which help you always round certain values up or down. The syntax does not differ from the ROUND function.

For example, to round up, you can use =ROUNDUP(B2; 0). This ensures that you never round below the actual value.

The same goes for the ROUNDDOWN function. If you want to round the value in B2 to the nearest whole number, you write =ROUNDDOWN(B2; 0).

6. Rounding to a Specific Value

If you want to round values not only to whole numbers, but to multiples of 50 cents, then you use the VRUNDEN function. This function is particularly useful when working with currency amounts that need to be rounded to specific fractions.

The syntax is =VRUNDEN(B2; 0,5). This rounds the value to the nearest multiple of 50 cents.

7. Conclusion on Rounding Application

Once you have understood the basic rounding functions in Excel, it will be much easier for you to deal with prices and budget planning. You can adjust the value in your table to meet your business requirements.

Summary

In this tutorial, you have learned the versatile ways of rounding in Excel. You have learned how to round values in a businesslike manner to prepare them for your reporting in controlling or sales. With the functions ROUND, ROUNDUP, ROUNDDOWN, and VRUNDEN, you are now able to efficiently manage and present numbers.