Bob Umlas said:
Anyone have GOOD examples with explanation in text to demonstrate when/where
you'd use this function & why?
....
The description in online help isn't sufficient? Well, maybe it isn't.
In theory the IRR function could handle any cashflow no matter how
irregular if each cell (or each item if the 1st argument were an array)
represented a month, week, day, hour, minute, etc. and the cells
corresponding to periods without cashflows contained zeros. However,
such cashflow ranges (or arrays) could become quite large and contain
mostly zeros.
In reality the IRR function breaks down when its 1st argument contains
more than a few hundred cells. XIRR requires only the nonzero cashflows
plus their dates, so data entry could be much less than for and
equivalent cashflow for IRR. It may also break down if there are more
than a few hundred nonzero cashflows (never torture tested it), but
it's much more flexible than IRR. So in short XIRR handles a breader
set of cashflows than IRR.
As for examples and when you'd use IRR or XIRR, why do you want to
know? If it's purely personal interest, wouldn't you be better off
reading a text on finance? Even if it's for a presentation to others,
wouldn't learning the subject matter be a better way of understanding
IRR and XIRR?
