Precision Financial Calculator

Example 1-6 Calculate Rate of Return from accounting records

Suppose you have an investment account. The beginning balance at 1/1/1999 was $100,000. Within a year, you had contributions and withdrawals from this account. What is the investment rate of return for that year?

[Procedures]

From the financial calculator, select the 'Investment' tab. Select Period Type to be Non-Periodic. The beginning balance is your investment, so type in -100,000 for the first cell. Enter 1/1/1999 on the second column. Enter the amount and date for each of your contributions or withdrawals. Note that contributions are negative (since they are investments and cash out flow) and withdrawals are positive (since they are revenues and cash in flow). Enter the ending balance and 12/31/1999 to the last row. Highlight cash flow from row 1 to the last one. You will get the IRR. Precision automatically converts all IRRs to annual equivalent.

If you have the transaction amount and date data in spreadsheet format, make sure the first column is the amount and the second column is date, copy the range containing both amount and date from the spreadsheet, focus the Precision's cash flow input worksheet at the first cell, press Ctrl-V to paste the data. Precision supports Windows OLE copy and paste functionality. This is extremely useful when you have large amounts of data.


  Go To  Top