Tip #15: Stop guessing and start estimating with Zoho Sheet's Goal Seek

Goal Seek is an ideal spreadsheet tool for devising estimates, as it helps you retrieve your desired output value when the input values are not known. In other words, Goal Seek does back-solving to find input values once you've provided an output value. Let's see how Goal Seek can help you prepare business estimates in Zoho Sheet.

Goal Seek: A smart tool to create estimates

Goal Seek is a simple yet intelligent tool that lets you specify the result you wish to obtain and tailors input data accordingly. All you need to have before preparing your estimate is a set of data derived from any formula.

 

Assume the monthly payment on a $150,000 business loan, with an interest rate of 4% for two years (split into 24 months/terms), is $9,838. Assume your business can only afford $7,000 per month, and you wish to find the amount you can borrow.

 

In the below example, we'll use the PMT() function to find the monthly installment for the given loan amount, interest rate, and number of terms. With the use of Goal Seek, you can determine a loan amount that allows for $7,000 installments each month.

Here's yet another scenario where Goal Seek helps you estimate the revenue to get $50 as the final payout.

Note: The value in the target cell should be based on a formula to get the desired result.

To explore more tips, check out our Tips and Tricks forum. Follow our community to get the latest updates and to participate in discussions with other users. 

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• Subashree Ramamurthy

  

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