Documenting Spreadsheets with Pseudo-Code: an Exercise with Cash-Flow and Loans

TL;DR

This paper advocates for documenting spreadsheets using pseudo-code to improve clarity, maintainability, and auditing, demonstrated through a tutorial on cash-flow and loans spreadsheets.

Contribution

It introduces a pseudo-code specification method for spreadsheets, based on an executable notation, enhancing documentation and planning before implementation.

Findings

Pseudo-code improves spreadsheet documentation clarity.

The method facilitates auditing and maintenance.

Tutorial demonstrates practical application with cash-flow and loans spreadsheets.

Abstract

"Look before you leap"; "a stitch in time saves nine"; "more haste, less speed". Many proverbs declare the wisdom of planning before doing. We suggest how to apply this to Excel, by explaining and specifying spreadsheets before coding them, so there will always be documentation for auditors and maintenance programmers. The specification method uses "pseudo-code": code that, for precision and conciseness, resembles a programming language, but is not executable. It is, however, based on the notation used by our Excelsior spreadsheet generator, which is executable. This paper is structured as a tutorial, in which we develop a simple cash-flow and loans spreadsheet.