This document provides instructions for creating a spreadsheet to track ingredient costs and recipes. It includes: 1) Entering ingredient names, quantities, units, and costs to calculate the cost per gram of each. Formulas are used to automatically fill costs down the list. 2) Creating recipes that list ingredients and amounts, then linking to the cost sheet to calculate total recipe costs. 3) Building a user input sheet with drop-down menus and validation to allow creating new recipes. Formulas look up ingredient costs and calculate totals. Conditional formatting highlights profits/losses, and sheets can be protected to control user inputs. The full instructions provide a guided tutorial to build this interactive cost and recipe tracking spreadsheet.

1. Spreadsheets
Skills Builder

2. Creating A Simple Spreadsheet –
What you will make

3. Cell Reference
A Cell Reference is used to locate a cell in
your Spreadsheet. Like coordinates.
Example: A1 B2 B3
Letters Represent the column
Numbers represent the row

4. Entering Data
 To
enter data simply click in the cell you
want to enter data into and type.

5. Task One
 Copy the ingredients from the board and
enter them into a new Spreadsheet.
 Put the name of the ingredient in column
A, the Quantity that unit comes in in
column B and the unit in column C and
the cost in column D.
HINT: Do NOT type in a £ sign in front of your
cost.

7. Simple Calculations
 Spreadsheets can carry out simple
calculations just like a calculator.
 The most simple including:
 Add (+)
 Subtract (-)
 Divide (/)
 Multiply (*)
 You always start a formula with an „=„
 E.g. =A1+B1

8. Example
In the example below I have worked out the
cost of one gram of basil. To do this I need to
dived £1.89 by 25. The formula for this is:
=D2/B2

9. Task Two
 Add a Cost Per g heading into column E.
 Using simple calculation formulas
calculate the cost for one gram of each
ingredient.
 Only type in formulas for the first three to
get the hang of it.

10. Fill Handle
 One of the reasons we use formulas rather
than typing in the numbers is so that we
can apply the same calculation to lots of
cells.
When you click on a cell you
will notice a small black square
in the bottom right of the box.
Click and hold down on this square
and drag down to your bottom
ingredient.

11. Example

12. Relative Cell Reference
 You should now notice that the same
calculation has been copied down and
all the letters in the formula have stayed
the same but the numbers have changed
to the number for the row they are in.
This is what is called a relative cell
reference.

13. Cell Formatting
 Your might have automatically formatted
your cost to currency and put a £ in front
of your numbers.
 If not you will need to format the cells.
 Formatting is your way of telling the
Spreadsheet what type of data is in the
cell. i.e. Currency, Number, Text

14. Example
 Select the cells
you want to
format.
 Then right click
inside the blue
box and click on
Format Cells.

15.  SelectCurrency
from the category
list.
 Pick the number of
decimal places you
want to be shown.
 Set it to 2.

16. Making it look good
 Now we have finished our simple
Spreadsheet we need to make it look
neater.
 Using Boarders and Aligning text we can
make a table look clearer and more
professional.

17.  Select the cells
you want to add
Example a border to and
then use the
Borders drop
down to select
the style you
want.

19. Naming Worksheets
 Tohelp keep your work organized rename
the sheets you are using by right clicking
on the tab.

20. Formulas and Functions
 Weare now going to create a more
complex Spreadsheet using functions.
A function is a pre programed calculation
in the software that you only need to
enter the name of to make it perform the
calculation.
 E.g. SUM, MIN, MAX

21. What you will make

22. Task Three
 Rename Sheet 2 as Recipes.
 Copy the smoothie recipes shown or
make your own. Each smoothie must
have at least four ingredients.
tomato, bean and carrot smoothie frozen blueberry smoothie
tomato juice 150 ml frozen blueberries 75 g
carrot juice 150 ml low fat vanilla yoghurt 120 ml
tabasco sauce 1 ml skimmed milk 120 ml
worcestershire sauce 1 ml honey 40 g
basil 1 g ice cubes 10 g
canned borlotti beans 125 g
raspberry strawberry smoothie
summer berry smoothie strawberries 150 g
raspberries 100 g raspberries 150 g
strawberries 100 g pineapple juice 125 ml
milk 75 ml low fat natural yoghurt 250 ml
lemon juice 20 g ice cubes 10 g

24. Linking Sheets Together
 Notonly can you use formulas to do
calculations with data on a sheet but you
can also do it with information on different
sheets.
 Todo this we need to add the name of
the sheet in front of the cell reference.

25. Example
 Towork of the cost of the ingredients used
in each smoothie we need to multiply the
amount used in the smoothie which is on
the Recipes sheet by the cost of a single g
of the ingredient which is on the Cost of
Ingredients sheet.
Hint: Excel will do this automatically when
you click in the cell you are using.

26. =B2*'Cost of Ingredients'!E17
Because we are typing the formula in the Recipes sheet
we do not need to add the sheet name for Recipes.

27. Task Four
 Usea simple formula to calculate the cost
of each ingredient in the smoothie by
multiplying the amount use by the cost for
a gram.
Note: Using the auto fill handle wont work
here! Why not?

28. To make your layout the same as this you will need to merge (put
together) the cells above the amount number and unit using the
Merge and Centre Button

29. SUM Function
 TheSUM function will add a list of numbers
together. This is useful as it is easier than
using individual cell references.
E.g.
= A1 + A2 + A3 +A4 + A5 + A6 + A7 + A8
vs.
= SUM(A1:A8)

30. Task Five
 Usethe SUM function to add all of the
ingredients for each smoothie together.
 Youhave four smoothie‟s so you will need
to write 4 SUM functions.

31. Example

32. Borders and Shading
 Just
as we added boarders before now
add borders and shading to make the
tables look better.

34. Task Six
 Now we you know how to use formulas and
functions make a summary table that will show
much profit would be made if the numbers shown
below for £2.80 each.
 It should look like this.

36. User Input
 We now want to allow a user to input
information to make new smoothie‟s.
 Tomake sure the user enters the correct
type of information we need to restrict
what they can do. This is called validation.

37. What you will make

38. Task Seven
 Before
we get started create the table
shown below on a new Sheets and
rename the Sheet Smoothie Maker.

39. Dropdown Boxes
 One great way of controlling a users input
is using drop boxes.
 Thisis what we will use to allow the user to
enter the ingredients they want to use in
the new smoothie.

40. Example
 Select the cells you want to be drop
boxes
 Select the Data Tab and click on data
validation.

41.  Select list from the
allow menu.
 Click on the Source
and select the
ingredients in your
Spreadsheet.
 Click Ok
Note: I have included a None ingredient

42. Task Eight
 Follow the
steps to add
dropdown
boxes.
 When you
click in these
Cells a drop
down box
should
appear.

43. Data Validation
 It
would be impractical to use a
dropdown box when entering the amount
as this could be anything number
between 1 and 1000.
 Another way of restricting a user's input is
to only allow them to enter one type of
data . i.e. Number, Date, Text

44. Example
 Again select the cells you want to
validate. Click the Data Tab and click on
data validation.
 Thistime pick Whole
Number from the list
and enter a
Minimum number
and a Maximum.

45.  Before clicking ok.
Click on the Input
Message Tab and
add a message to
tell the user what
they need to type in
these cells.
 Then click on the
Error Alert Tab and
add a message that
will appear should
the user enter
something incorrect
into the cell.

46. Vlookup
 Now that the user can enter a ingredient from
a list and type the amount of that ingredient
they want we need to calculate the cost.
 Because the ingredient entered will not
always be the same we cant use a normal
cell reference to the ingredients cost.
 What we need to do is LOOKUP the cost using
the name of the ingredient

47. Example
,
=VLOOKUP(B4,'Cost of Ingredients'!A2:E19 5)
The table you The number
The name you of the column
are looking for
are looking up you want returned
The name in
in that table
1 2 3 4 5

48. =VLOOKUP(B4,'Cost of Ingredients'!A2:E19,5)*Sheet1!F4
Now you have looked up the cost for that ingredient you
need to multiply it by the amount.
Try: What happens if you try and use the auto fill. Does it
work? Why does it not work? If it looks like it works try
changing one of your ingredients to basil.
Why is this not
working?

49. Absolute Cell Referencing
 The reason it doesn‟t
work is because we
have used relative cell
references so as we
dragged the auto fill
down the position of
where we were looking
for our table moved.
 As you can see the
table has moved
down and can no
longer see some of the
ingredients.

50. Absolute Cell Referencing
 What we need to do is lock some of the cell
references so that they don‟t change when using
auto fill.
 This is what absolute cell referencing is.
 Its really simple to do too. Just add a $ in front of
the letter and number you want to lock.
=VLOOKUP(B4,'Cost of Ingredients'!$A$2:$E$18,5)
These cells are not locked and these are locked
Hint: If you select a cell reference and press F4 it
will lock it

51.  We now have a table that allows the user to select
different ingredients and there amounts and it will
automatically tell you how much it cost to make
that smoothie.
 You will need to use a SUM function to add up all
the costs.

52. Task Ten
 You can easily link one cell to another by
typing = and then the cell reference.
 Put the cost of the smoothing in using =
E11
Use data
validation to
only allow the
user to enter. A
decimal.

53. IF Function
 An if function will return an answer IF
something is true.
 We will use this to Return the Word “Profit”
if the smoothie made is cheaper to make
than the Price entered by the user.
 It will return “Loss” if it is more expensive.

54. Example
=IF(E15>E14,"Profit","Loss")
This is the check: If it is “Profit” If it is not “Loss”
Is E15 bigger than E14? will be shown will be shown

55. Conditional Formatting
 Conditionalformatting allows us to
change the colour and shading of cells
depending on what data is in them.
 This is useful to highlight information.

56. Example
To apply conditional formatting select the
cell you want to format and click on
conditional formatting. We are going to use
the highlight cells rule use text that contains.

57.  Type Profit into the box and select green
fill from the list.
 Then apply formatting again to the same
cell but enter Loss into the box and Red Fill

58. Now if a Profit is
made it will appear
light Green.
Now if a Loss is
made it will appear
light Red.

59. Task Eleven
 Follow
the steps to apply the conditional
formatting to the Profit/Loss cell.
Use a simple
calculation to
work out if
money is made
on the
smoothie by
taking the cost
to make it
away from the
price.

60. Task Twelve
 Apply conditional
formatting to
highlight the cell
green if the
number is greater
than 0 and red if
it is less than 0.01.

61. Protecting Cells
 To stop the user from changing the titles
and any formulas used we need to lock
those cells.
 The only cells we want unlocked are the
ones where the users needs to input
information.

62. Example
 Select the cells
you want to be
unlocked.
 Right click and
select Format
Cells.

63.  Click on the protection tab and notice how
the Locked option is already ticked.
 This is because all cells are locked by default.
 Un-tick the box and click ok.

64.  Eventhough all cells are locked by
default this doesn't do anything until we
protect the worksheet.
Under the Review
tab select Protect
Sheet.
Un-tick the Select
locked cells option
Click OK

65.  Now the user can only click on and enter
information into our unlocked cells.

66. You have now covered all of the skills and
features need in your Spreadsheet. Click on
the images below to return to how to make
that sheet.
Cost of Ingredients Recipes Smoothie Maker