Good communication is paramount to collaborating on workbooks. If you want something done a certain way, you need to give your users careful instructions.​

Essentially, think about the spreadsheet from the perspective of your least technical user, and create it for them.​

Some best practices:​

•  Put instructions on the page. Even something that seems as obvious as “Press [Tab] or [Shift][Tab] to move between fields” can be useful for the less technically inclined.​
•  Dole out information in bite-sized chunks, rather than a large sheet of text. If you spell out instructions on what to do in a Word document, for example, it will be less effective than if you put those instructions beside fields on your Excel sheet.​
•  If a user needs other data to proceed, make sure that they have that data inputted. This can tie into setting a workflow.​
•  Set clear due dates and deadlines in your workflow.

Not everyone is an accountant and the terminology can be very different. For example, a finance professional might call a line item G/L Entry #45,

but to a sales department manager, it makes more sense as “Travel Accommodations.”​

Using the same language as your users will ease the process considerably.​

• Design custom templates for each team, if it is going to multiple departments, and use language for each department (for example, sales vs. IT).​
• Design list categories with your users in mind, and limit selection to those lists.​
• If you are not sure what language makes sense, do a consult with the users who will be accessing the worksheet. ​
• Avoid jargon. If you have users who are not as technically savvy, make sure your instructions are worded clearly. Sometimes, even terms like “pivot table” might be hard for a non-Excel user to understand.

​Which one of these strategies will you put into practice?