Administrative roles

Organisations commonly use spreadsheets to record and process day-to-day operational data. This work is typically delegated to staff who work in an administrative job role. Spreadsheet users in this role support routine business operations and don't require advanced technical skills. They do however need to be able to operate spreadsheets safely and competently.

Relevant competencies

Administrative users need a solid grasp of all basic level competencies in the framework. This requires knowledge of how to navigate a spreadsheet, enter values and functions, copy data, apply cell formatting and use filters. More broadly administrative users need to understand and apply version control to protect data integrity, and they will know how to use AI safely to ask questions of their data.

Administrative users will find it beneficial to know many of the general level competencies. For example, data input skills could be developed by using the Fill Handle for efficient formula data entry and importing data using Power Query. 

The competency framework

ICAEW's Spreadsheet Competency Framework is colour coded to illustrate the relevance of each competency.

• Core competencies form the essential Excel knowledge required for this job role.
• Beneficial competencies are additional skills individuals may choose to develop to strengthen their capability.
• Less relevant competencies remain useful Excel skills but are not as directly applicable to the role and therefore may be given lower priority.

Below is an interactive summary of the core competencies, as well as those beneficial to develop further capabilities, for this job role. Click through each section, in the left-hand column, to explore the framework. 

More support

We have built a unique Microsoft Power BI dashboard allowing users to explore the Spreadsheet Competency Framework and all of the Excel content from icaew.com, and the ION archive, in one place.

Explore the framework in more detail and filter it by section, role, level and relevance to learn how it can apply to you or your organisation.

• Access the dashboard.