You have a database full to bursting with fantastic data, but how do you utilise it in an effective, time efficient way? After all, you don’t want to be having to re-create your work every month and if you are like a lot of people, you struggle with the more complex reporting options available to you. Most analysts that I have met use MS Excel™ for this as they are comfortable with it, it is flexible and if you have the know-how you can create some complex reports. However, there may finally be an easier way, thanks to the creators of PerTOOLS.com.
PerTOOLS.com has produced two products that integrate seamlessly into Excel as add-ins. As the tools are add-ins they do not require any additional hardware and can be installed in less than a minute. The two tools are designed to complement each other and some would argue that they should be a single tool. The first tool is for extracting the data from your PerTrac database and the other one is for analysing the data. It would appear that the reason these have been kept separate is to appeal to a larger target market. After all, not everyone who wants to do monthly time-series analysis uses PerTrac and vice versa, not all PerTrac users would need to do the complex analysis.
The tools work by providing single cell formulae just like the usual =SUM() Excel format. However, these formulae allow you to retrieve data from your PerTrac database that will refresh automatically when the data changes, so there is no need to rebuild the sheet every month, and for all that cutting and pasting of data. The rule seems to be, if the data is in the database, the tool can retrieve it. The analysis tool boasts over 60 popular but complex formulae which are again simplified down to a single cell formula. My personal favourite is the Max Drawdown calculations as these are normally almost impossible in Excel, in fact I personally have never managed it in Excel.
Everybody seems to have a different answer to how returns should be compounded, is it Arthmetic or Geometric? This is a debate that PerTOOLS.com seems reluctant to embroil themselves in and have side stepped it by providing both options wherever applicable. Another gripe with a lot of similar tools that provide calculations is that you can never be quite sure how they are calculating them. The descriptions are often just there to fuel your confusion. PerTOOLS.com has done what I have never understood why more providers have not done, they give all the formulae in their user guides, so you are no longer left guess how a value is being calculated. For those of us who are not masters of Excel and formulae it can be a little intimidating, not to mention time consuming, building your first spreadsheets with such tools. However, what I found helped immensely was the example spreadsheets that come with the PerTOOLS.com products; you can literally just copy them and claim it to be your own work – easy!!
Ultimately, the PerTOOLS.com products are a simple idea and you may be sat there reading this thinking “but I have already written something like that myself”, well congratulations, but for the rest of us there is PerTOOLS.com. As you have probably realised, I am a fan of these new products but don’t take my word for it - PerTOOLS.com have shown confidence in their own products and offer a free trial of both tools so that anybody can try them free of charge before deciding whether to keep the tools or not. However, one thing is for sure, I am keeping mine, so get your own!
