You currently work for an automotive parts supply store. Your company is growing, and is considering expansion. The company currently has three locations (North, South, and Central) in one state, and wants to consider expanding within the same state. You have been presented with the sales figures for the last three years for each of your locations. Based on this information, you're tasked with analyzing current sales. 

The company classifies the sales at the stores as either retail sales to end users, or wholesale to repair facilities. You want to determine whether the growth is in the retail sales, the wholesale sales, or equally in both.

A - (TCO 9) The data has been provided to you in one combined .csv file showing the sales for all three stores for the last three years. The stores all categorize sales as either retail or wholesale, but they are not consistent in how they do this. The South location uses a code of "R" for retail, or "W" for wholesale. The other locations use "RS" for retail sales or "WS" for wholesale sales. Explain the steps involved in converting the information from the .csv file to Excel, and what steps you will take to assure the data is usable for your purpose. 
B - (TCO 2) Explain, based on material covered in this class, your approach to setting up your worksheet and organizing the data. Because you have all sales records, you want to summarize it by month.
C - (TCO 3) Explain how you will visually represent the comparison of the total retail and wholesale sales at the individual stores for each of the three years. 
D - (TCO 7) Once you have finished the above tasks, your Excel workbook will be placed on your company server so that all of the managers can view it. The workbook contains multiple pages, but you only want them to see the summarized data and your charts. Describe how you will assure they don't access the other worksheets in your workbook.

You own your own small party supply and rental business. You maintain an Excel list of potential customers and clients who have rented or purchased from you in the past two years. The list includes both physical mailing addresses and e-mail addresses for each person listed. You have a "category" code to show whether the contact is a client. If they have done business with you, they show a code of "CUST" for customer. If they are potential customers who have not yet purchased or rented from you, they are coded as "PROS" for prospect. 

You want to grow your business, and feel the best way to do this is to solicit business from your prospects who have physical addresses in the same zip code as your business location. Respond fully to the following questions regarding this task:

A - (TCO 4) Explain how you will use Excel to find in your list the people you are targeting for new business. Be specific.
B - (TCO 8) You have used your computer skills to develop and print a beautiful flyer, and you intend to mail it to your prospects. However, you dread hand addressing the envelopes. Explain how you might use Excel to make this go faster.
C - (TCO 7) If you get the results you expect to get from contacting your prospects, you want to be able to do this every month. Explain how you might use Excel to automate the process of separating your list as you did in Part A.
D - (TCO 6) Your list is extensive, and mailing letters is expensive. Cost is $15 for every 50 letters mailed. You want to gauge the impact on your income statement of mailing 50, 100, 200, and 400 letters. Explain how you might evaluate this using your Excel tools."