5g: Function Libraries

5g functions are grouped into libraries (also known as modules). Each library focuses on a specific subject, such as dates or financial calculations. This organization allows us to load only the relevant library for our needs. For example, if our model requires date-related calculations, we can load the Dates library instead of adding individual functions one by one.

The purpose of libraries is to simplify the process of importing functions into models. Rather than importing functions individually, we can load an entire library at once, gaining access to multiple functions in a single step. Some may worry that adding a library will introduce unnecessary functions, potentially bloating the model or slowing performance. However, tests confirm that performance remains unaffected. While model file sizes do increase slightly, the impact is minimal—the entire Financial library, for instance, adds less than 11 KB to a model's file size.

For ease of use and maintenance, we highly recommend loading and keeping entire libraries within models. This approach not only simplifies function imports but also streamlines updates when newer versions become available.

On this page are library page links. On each library page is a URL (web address) that Microsoft's free Advanced Formula Environment can use to import the library directly into our Excel workbook - free! Each library page also list all functions it contains with links to each function page. Each function page displays useful information on what the function does and how to use it.

Multi-dimensional Modeling Module

This module was inspired by a challenge issued to the word's financial modeling community by Paul Mireault. The traditional modeling approaches struggled to solve his puzzle because spreadsheets are two dimensional. Even so, this problem was solved in databases decades ago with the n-fold cartesian product, which is a way of making all possible distinct combinations of various dimensions. This is best used in table based modeling methodology.