Nerdvana

I was at coffee with friends this morning, and one of my "friends" described my recent experience with an Excel spreadsheet as one of "nerdvana." Unfortunately, I believe he's probably right.

Part of my job consists of overseeing our accounts receivable and work-in-process balances. I've created a spreadsheet that tracks the balances of those assets each month for the past years. I have all of those balances graphed for each year - A/R vs WIP vs Revenue. These graphs are things a beauty. I learned two things from studying my graphs. First of all, our business is seasonal. I already knew that, but my graphs make it very clear - spikes twice a year in Spring and Fall busy seasons. But, it's interesting to note that A/R generally lags a month. If revenue and WIP spike in March, A/R spikes in April. The same is true in the fall, only the lag is less pronounced. For the last several years, A/R has hovered significantly about revenue and WIP... mainly because we were carrying a lot of old receivables.

As you can tell, I was highly focused on my spreadsheet. So much so that when I looked up from my spreadsheet around 5:45, I really couldn't tell you what time it was or even what day it was. I'm serious, it could have been 10:00 at night for all I knew. As someone else pointed out, I must not have any problem concentrating on my task at hand. I only wish that was the rule and not the exception!