‘For me Excel isn’t just software, it’s essentially a magic spell that can help transform boring data into insights,’ said Anand Singh ACA, Excel expert and technical writer at Croner-i.

‘Its features give you answers from data sets you thought would take days or months to extract in a few clicks. It is like having a genius locked in the computer who never asks for coffee breaks!’

No doubt many accountants will remember a time before Excel when work was done by hand, using calculators and reems of green ledger paper. Excel definitely consigned the old ledgers to the bin.