Using the TEA spreadsheets

No, thanks to the power of automated formulas!

In each tab of the TEA Income and Expenses spreadsheet, you only need to enter data in the columns with colourful highlighted hearings. The columns with the plain, white-background headings auto-populate from the formulas in those columns.

Yes! All TEA users can hide, unhide, and make changes to any unlocked cells in their TEA spreadsheets. All TEA users can also add new tabs to their TEA spreadsheets, hide and unhide locked cells, and add new columns anywhere in their TEA spreadsheets.

Since each row includes some locked cells that contain formulas, TEA users cannot currently add, delete, or move whole rows in TEA.

I have disabled the option to let users add rows in the TEA spreadsheets because any newly added row would contain only blank cells and would not include the formulas that power the TEA calculations. If you manually entered project or expenses data into a blank row and did all the calculations yourself, that data might not get included in the Summaries tab, and there would be a risk of introducing inaccuracies and inconsistencies through human error.

Similarly, it's not currently possible to delete or move whole rows of data in TEA. This is because each row contains some data that's locked (i.e., the formulas in the locked columns), and the formulas must be protected so that they work in each row. This means that you will need to manually delete the data that you've manually entered or copy-and-paste it from the old rows into the new rows; the auto-fill data will then automatically disappear from the old rows and get automatically added to the new rows.

Excel's ‘clear content’ function unfortunately doesn't work across a whole row in the TEA spreadsheets because some of the columns in each sheet are locked. You will need to delete the text from each unlocked column in the row, one at a time (which would also clear the data in the auto-populated locked columns).

If you wish to clear the sample data that I included in your TEA spreadsheet, you'd only need to do this once and then save the sample-free spreadsheet as a new file if you want to create a clean template for future use.

Absolutely! If you're a TEA user, I encourage you to keep using your existing TEA package to record and analyze your business data in years to come. Simply open your TEA Income and Expenses Excel spreadsheet (or the most recent version that you have, if you’ve purchased more than one) and save a new version of it, with a filename that reflects the new year. Then, enter all your data for the new year in your new version of the file.

When you first purchase your TEA, I suggest saving a data-free file as well as the file you’re going to use for the current year,  to ensure you always have a spreadsheet that you can use for a new year's data. 

I recommend that you include rows for the project in both years' TEA but only fill in the payment and hours-worked details that pertain to the current year in each spreadsheet. Filling in all the details in both years can lead to the payment amounts and hours worked being included in the monthly, client and overall summaries for both years.

As a simple example, if the client paid for work in 2022 but you only did the work in 2023 (and if your TEA is organized by calendar year):

• the Income tab of your 2022 TEA Income and Expenses Excel spreadsheet should include a row for the project with the "Payment Due Date on Invoice," "Date Paid," "Amount Invoiced," and "Amount Received" columns filled in;

• and the Income tab of your 2023 spreadsheet should include a row for the project with the "Work Start Date," "Work Deadline," "Work Completed Date," and "Hours Worked (Act.)" columns filled in.