If you make use of Thomson Reuters Excel templates to extract the financials of listed companies and other instruments into Excel, you will understand the frustration that we have helped some clients with.
Difficulties with using Thomson Reuters Excel templates
Although the information comes out in a human reading friendly way (dates across the top, description down the left, separate Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement), it is very rare that it is in the format you want, and the layout is not very computer user friendly (especially if you plan to do some other calculations on the data with some projections).
Using the existing templates, you are probably doing other calculations using the data, and this is where you get into complex Excel formula just to get the right data into the right place.
Firstly, you need to get Excel to search for the correct time period (vertical) and description (horizontal) as shown below.
But you also need to use the correct sheet depending on whether you want numbers from the Income Statement (3 below), Balance Sheet (2) or Cash Flow Statement (4). And in most cases valuations need numbers from all 3 and other data available via a template.
Convert Reuters data into searchable database
Using our knowledge, we have assisted clients in getting all this information into a single, searchable, Excel sheet so that all you need to know is the Reuters code and the date, and you will get your numbers with a single, simple formula (VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, SUMIFS – whichever one works best for you).
We achieved this using only the tools in Excel without interfering with the Reuters addin. Just letting Excel do what it is good at and letting Reuters provide the information.
Thomson Reuters Excel Consulting
If you need assistance with making better use of your Reuters templates, send an email to info@AuditExcel.co.za . If you want to learn more about Financial Modelling which is critical to taking this Reuters data and projecting it forward then look at the Online Financial Modelling courses we offer.