MEMORANDUM

This memo will explain the basics of calculating prejudgment interest in Microsoft Excel.

TO CALCULATE PREJUDGMENT INTEREST TO TODAY’S DATE

The following method will enable you to calculate prejudgment interest to today’s date on
multiple sums. Each day the Excel spreadsheet is opened, the interest amounts should adjust
automatically to reflect the current interest accrued.

First, set up the columns shown below and enter your values. The below screenshot is set up as
“invoice date” for column A, “amount” for column B, “interest rate” for column C, and “interest
to date” for column D. This last column is what the formula described below will generate
automatically for each invoice amount.

Format the cells: It is important to make sure that each column is formatted so that Excel
“knows” what sort of value is being reflected therein.

Select all of the values in each column1, right click within the column, click “format cells,” and
then make sure the correct format is selected for each column (date, currency, percentage, etc.).
For column A, you will want to select the “date” format. For columns B and D, you will want to

1
To do so, left click the top value in each column, hold the “shift” button, then, while
holding the shift button, scroll down to the last value in that column and left click again. This
will select all of the values in that particular column.
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select the “currency” formats (make sure that it is counted to two decimal places to ensure that
cents are counted). For column C, select “percentage” as the format.

Add the formula: When you’ve created these columns and made sure each one is formatted
correctly for its contents, the next step is to add the prejudgment interest calculating formula.

Click on the first empty cell in the “interest to date” column, and then type the following formula
into the “fx” (or “formula”) bar shown above the columns:

=B2*C2*(TODAY()-A2)/365
Here is a picture of what the formula bar and cell should look like once you’ve copied and pasted
the above formula:

Next, hit “enter,” or simply click to another cell, and the interest formula should go to work
immediately in that cell to give you the prejudgment interest accrued to date:
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Populating the rest of the interest to date cells: Finally, to populate all of the “interest to date”
cells with the formula and generate prejudgment interest in each cell, left click on the first
“interest to date” cell that has already been populated (the one for $2,983.76 shown above). Once
you click on it, should see a small black box appear in the bottom right corner of that cell. Left
click that box and, holding the left click button down, drag the mouse down to the very bottom of
the columns. Once you let go, all of the cells should automatically populate:

TO CALCULATE PREJUDGMENT INTEREST UP TO A SPECIFIC FUTURE

HEARING DATE
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The prior method demonstrated how to calculate prejudgment interest up to and including
today’s date. The formula can be tweaked in order to calculate prejudgment interest up to a
specific date instead. This is useful if, for example, you are requesting prejudgment interest up to
and including the hearing date on a specific motion.

To do this, you need to add another column, the “hearing date” column, and populate each cell in
that column with the date to which you want prejudgment interest to be calculated:

The “interest to date” column has been renamed “interest to hearing date.” The formula to add to
this last column, in the same manner as described above, is as follows:

=B2*C2*(D2-A2)/365
Once you have entered this formula, follow the same steps as before to populate the entire
“interest to hearing date” column.