- SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS -

A "SPREADSHEET" is like a ledger that accountants used to use to record all the transactions, expenses, profits, etc. for a business.  These ledgers were long and time consuming and when a mistake or change was made, hours were lost in recalculating all the figures that were affected.  An electronic spreadsheet eliminates the need for any manual calculations because it does them all automatically.

Like word processing, there are more than one spreadsheet programs on the market because of the large demand for them.  The most popular one for some time, however, is MS Excel.  The industry standard at the onset was Lotus 123, but the company thought it had a corner on the market and Microsoft Excel left 123 in the dust years ago.