You are hired to review the operations of a small business with 3 stores that sell the exact same products.

The managers of the three stores have to submit a budget prepared in Excel for each month a week before the end of the previous month. This has been the case for 5 years. The budgets for every month, for 5 years, are stored on your computer and you can access them at any time.

This week the managers sent the budget for August and it is up to you to verify them and recommend approving them or not. You see that Store 1 manager's budget is requesting financing for store operations 3 times higher than the other two managers. You think it is possible that this manager is inflating the funding request that he sends in the budget.

REQUIRED: What specific steps will you use to prepare an Excel sheet that allows you to review the suspicion that the Store 1 manager is inflating the budget amounts and determine if it can be approved or not?