You are calculating commissions for sales staff at work. Employees receive ten dollars for every item sold. Your boss also wants to know the grand total paid to all employees as commission. How would you set this up in an Excel workbook and would you use absolute references, relative references, or both?

To find the grand total paid to all employees as commission, we note the following;

The amount received by employees as commission for each item sold, r = $10.00

The information the boss wants to know = The grand total paid to all employees as commission

Let 'n' represent the the total sales, we have;

The grand total commission = Total sales × Commission

1) On MS Excel, four columns are created, labelled, Serial number, Employee Name, Number of Items Sold, Commission

2) In the second row, in the cell under the Commission column heading, Input the formula '=(Cell reference of adjacent Number of Items Sold) × 10' in the cell

3) Copy the the above formula to all the cells in the Commission column by clicking on the cell containing the formula, moving the mouse to the bottom right corner of the cell, and when the mouse pointer changes to a cross sign, left click and hold and drag to all the cells in the column

4) Input the formula =SUM(Argument) in the blank cell below the created Commission list

Where;

Argument = The reference to the range of cells containing the values in the Commission column

5) The output of the =SUM formula is the grand total paid to employees as commission

Explanation: