Rounding to the Nearest $50

Summary: When preparing financial reports, it may make your data easier to understand if you round it to the nearest multiple, such as the nearest $50 increment. You can do that using the worksheet functions described in this tip. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, Excel 2003, and Excel 2007.)

It is often necessary when creating financial reports to round figures to some value other than the nearest dollar. One common rounding point is to the nearest fifty dollars. If you need to round figures in this manner, then there are a number of formulas you can use to do the rounding.

The first approach is to use the MROUND function. This function allows you to round to any value you want, and has been covered in other ExcelTips. Basically, you would use the function as follows if the value you want to round is in cell B7:

=MROUND(B7,50)

The MROUND function is a part of the Analysis ToolPak included with Excel. If you don't want to install the toolpak or if you will be working with negative values, then you can't use MROUND. (The function returns errors if you use negative numbers.) In these instances, you can resort to the regular ROUND function. Either of the following variations will produce the exact same results:

=ROUND(F5/50,0)*50
=ROUND(F5*2,-2)/2

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2149) applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 | 2000 | 2002 | 2003 | 2007

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Rounding to the Nearest $50