Your deposits should be entered as negative amounts. The interest payments
received from the bank and withdrawals are positive amounts. The final balance
is a positive amount.

Assuming the interest payments are reinvested, only the deposits and
withdrawals (if any) and the final balance, with the correspnding dates, are
needed for the XIRR calculation.

Let's say you have dates in column A and amounts in B. If you made the initial
$10000 deposit on 1/1/2000, monthly additions of $1000 beginning 2/1/2000
through 12/1/2004, and have the balance as of 12/31/2004, you should have
-10000 in B1, -1000 in B2:B60, and the final balance in B61. The
first-of-month dates, 1/1/2000 through 12/1/2004, are in A1:A60, and
12/31/2004 in A61. Then the formula is:

=XIRR($B$1:$B$61,$A$1:$A$61)

On Fri, 8 Apr 2005 06:03:05 -0700, "Brad"
wrote:

Assume that $10,000 is deposited in a savings account at the beginning of
year 1 earning 5% and that $1,000 is deposited at the beginning of each month
into the same saving account also earning 5%. However in year two, the bank
changes the interest rate to 3%, and in year 3 changes it 2.5%... I want to
be able to generate an effective yield rate at the end of each year for this
case. The rate function can't do it because of the non-level premium flow.
Is it true that the XIRR can't do it because I don't have a negative balance?
If both of my statements are true - what are my options?