Systematic Business Calculator
A PC-based business calculator to help beginners and professionals alike with financial calculations:
- Comprehensive Help file
- Many worked examples and explanations
Learning to solve business problems with an HP17BII, HP12C or TI BA II Plus is not always straightforward and a screen-based calculator makes it easier. Therefore if you use handhelds or Excel for financial calculations, you need this calculator.
Download an evaluation file or a brochure. Depending on your laptop configuration, you may need an additional file from Microsoft for the Help file. Search Google for support.microsoft.com/en-GB/kb/917607. The correct file depends on the version of Windows you are using. Note that Microsoft do not provide a version for Windows 10 onwards and you will need to download an alternative.
Features
- Ease of use
- Comprehensive on-line help with examples and explanations activated by pressing F1
- Clear input screens - developed from practical training sessions
- All the information on-screen - helps to reduce input errors
- Excellent for advanced structuring and ‘what-if’ analyses
- Effective for learning purposes
- Print capability for keeping results
Who needs it?
The application has been designed to assist a wide cross-section of users:
- Professionals want easy-to-use tools for structuring and optimising proposals. Complex calculations such as multiple rentals on signing and a final residual value require a program, a series of precise keystrokes or developing a spreadsheet solution. Alternatively when you have entered all the numbers, you may want to change a cash flow and this can be unwieldy when you have a number of cash flow series in a calculator.
- Students and course attendees often have difficulty in getting to grips with time-line diagrams and analysing examples. Entering and reviewing the precise cash flows is difficult with hand-held calculators. You enter a number, push a button and it disappears. Often students want to look at all the variables at once to understand the problem or see where they are going wrong.
Supposing you wanted to calculate a complex structured loan or lease rental over three years at 14% where three periodic rentals are due on signing together with initial and terminal pauses and a final residual value. You could enter the program in your calculator manual, iterate a solution with a spreadsheet or use the Systematic Business Calculator.
Here you enter the variables you know and press PMT (Payment) to calculate the rental required directly. The rental to return a yield of 14% is 92,876.18. You get lots of information on the proposal and of course you can always print out the result for future reference.
The screen also displays the dates of the cash flows together with their values. This way it helps to cut down simple input errors and give you a clear idea of the solution.
Notice also that certain of the boxes are greyed out since you do not need them for this structure. The application checks your inputs and will tell you if you have errors or need to input more variables.
As you can see from the buttons on the screen above, the package comes equipped complete with these functions:
- Financial calculator for solving complex time versus money problems
- Quick calculator for cash flow calculations and interest rate conversions
- Amortisation schedules
- Depreciation by straight line, sum of digits, declining balance and US MACRS tax depreciation
- Discounted cash flows – IRR, NPV and MIRR
- Bonds calculations – price and yield
From this screen you could see the amortisation or display a depreciation schedule using any of the above methods. If you wanted to further structure the proposal you could open the Discounted Cash Flow screen to enter further cash flows and see the result on the interest rate or initial capital value.
Alternatively you could view or print the amortisation schedule:
| Module | Details |
| Finance Calculator (TVM) | 5 payment structures – terminal pause, no terminal pause, deposit with terminal pause, deposit without terminal pause, multiple rentals plus initial and terminal pause, deposit with initial and terminal pause |
| Calculate N, INT, PV, PMT or FV. Solve missing variable | |
| Calculate NPV at lower rate for broker sale and margin | |
| Other information shown – payment profile | |
| Show APR, periodic rate, simple interest | |
| Print results | |
| Quick Calculator | Simple arithmetic functions with inputs like a desktop calculator and a screen-based approach with buttons for numbers, operators, %, CHS, REC etc. |
| Single structure – N, INT, PV, PMT and FV. Updates from Finance Calculator | |
| Convert interest rates to effective rate (APR) and back again | |
| Copy result to FinCalc or DCF – so that you can calculate e.g. a net advance and then insert it into the DCF calculations | |
| Amortisation Schedule | Details of payment profile shown on labels for information from Finance Calculator if required |
| Schedule – PMT, Principal, Interest and Balance | |
| Running totals of interest and principal | |
| Print results | |
| Depreciation Schedule | Four methods – straight line, sum of digits, declining balance and US MACRS |
| Information entered from Finance Calculator if required | |
| Split dates and periods automatically | |
| Include salvage or residual value if required | |
| Input also capital, salvage and factor (DB and MACRS) | |
| Schedule – Depreciation, %, Total, written down value and written down value % | |
| Print results | |
| Discounted Cash Flows | Allows up to ten sets of cash flows |
| Update inputs from Finance Calculator if required | |
| Calculate NPV, IRR or MIRR | |
| Calculate also Payback and Accounting Return | |
| Calculate dates of each set of cash flows and total cash flow amount | |
| Print results | |
| Bonds | Enter settlement and maturity dates, coupon, call (100 assumed), payments per annum, and yield or price |
| Calculate yield to maturity or price plus simple yield | |
| Accepts a number of bases – 30/360 (Euro or US), Act/Act, 30/365, Act/365 | |
| Print results | |
| Options | Set decimal places, date format, currency symbol, max number of cash flows and max iterations. Automatically saved for next use. |