In this example, I am looking at how to add a percentage increase to calculate a monthly projected fundraising target.
Imagine my team is fundraising for a new community centre. In the last month they raised £76,000. I’d like to increase the total per month, but not put them off, so I want to add 4.5% increase to each month. So November’s target is 4.5% greater than October’s target, and December’s target is 4.5% greater than November’s figure.
Excel can calculate this all for me. So I set up a worksheet with the months of the year, and then a column for the current month’s fundraising target as our starting point. The total is £76,000 and I want the Target Fundraising column for November to show the total as £76,000 plus the 4.5% included. So my formula is =B2*104.5%.
(NB. If I used =B2*4.5% it would show the result as 4.5% of the total. By adding 100 to the 4.5% the answer will show the sales target including the 4.5%).
When I then copy the formula down the remainder of the column, the formula will take the total figure from the cell above it and apply 4.5%.
NB This is useful if the % increase per month is the same. If there are changes in % we need to add absolute references…but more on that in another post.
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