Accounting Spreadsheet

[KarenH]

What kind of accounting are you wondering about? For financial stuff, nonprofit rules, etc., you could use commercially available software such as Quickbooks. Your school or sponsor may be able to help you with that subject.

But for tracking your robot's weight and materials expenses for complying with FIRST rules (such as developing your Bill of Materials), you can just use a simple spreadsheet. I think our team uses Excel for the latter purposes, and for developing scouting spreadsheets/database.

As you are no doubt aware, the main thing is to be sure you enter your data accurately, and check it carefully. A clear and simple layout will help others to interpret your data. Try out a sample on your team members. If they can understand it without a lot of explanations, it's probably OK.

Also make sure to keep it updated throughout the season. People get so busy building the robot that they don't want to bother with the "accounting" paperwork, but you really don't want to show up at competition without a Bill of Materials, or any data to generate one.