How to Get First Entry By Month And Year in Excel

Why This Task Matters in Excel

In most operational spreadsheets, you rarely work with individual, sporadic dates; instead, you manage continuous date streams such as daily sales, hourly sensor readings, weekly employee timesheets, or transaction logs that arrive every few minutes. When reports must roll up to monthly or yearly summaries, analysts often need to know the very first record that occurred in each month–year bucket.

Consider a revenue ledger in retail. The first sale of every month often triggers scheduled processes: updating minimum stock thresholds, resetting marketing campaign metrics, or calculating the opening balance for a new accounting period. Similarly, in the energy sector, billing cycles start with a “first-read” of meter data on the first recorded timestamp in the month. Quality-control teams in manufacturing review the first inspection outcome of each production month to set a baseline. Healthcare researchers tracking patient vitals might examine the first recorded reading every month to spot long-term trends.

Extracting that first entry manually for dozens of months is slow and error-prone. When thousands of rows pour in daily, you need a reproducible, formula-driven process. Excel excels here because it offers versatile date functions (MONTH, YEAR, EOMONTH, MINIFS), flexible lookup tools (INDEX, XLOOKUP, FILTER), and data shaping features (Power Query, PivotTables) that can isolate the earliest record in milliseconds. Mastering this skill lets you automate monthly roll-ups, speed dashboard refreshes, and simplify downstream calculations such as month-over-month growth. Without it, you risk incorrect opening balances, mistakenly duplicating records, or producing reports that fail audit tests. Moreover, learning how to fetch the “first of month” entry builds transferable knowledge: grouping by time periods, conditional aggregation, and structured references—cornerstones of professional Excel modeling.

Best Excel Approach

The quickest, most transparent way in modern Excel (Microsoft 365 or Excel 2021+) is to combine the MINIFS function, which pinpoints the earliest date per month-year, with XLOOKUP or INDEX to return any associated field (amount, ID, description) that sits on that date. This two-step arrangement is robust, easy to audit, and unlike older array formulas it does not require Ctrl+Shift+Enter.

Logical flow

1. Compute the minimum (earliest) date that meets both year and month criteria.
2. Fetch the corresponding record from another column located on that specific date.

Recommended pattern:

=LET(
     Dates,      $A$2:$A$5000,          /* full date column */
     Values,     $B$2:$B$5000,          /* field you want returned */
     m,          MONTH(D2),             /* target month in cell D2 */
     y,          YEAR(D2),              /* target year  in cell D2 */
     Earliest,   MINIFS(Dates, Dates, ">="&DATE(y, m, 1), Dates, "<"&EOMONTH(DATE(y, m, 1), 0)+1),
     XLOOKUP(Earliest, Dates, Values)
)

Why this is best

• MINIFS is single-purpose: it filters then calculates the minimum, so performance remains high even across tens of thousands of records.
• XLOOKUP can return any associated field, supports exact match by default, and handles errors gracefully with its optional fourth parameter.
• The formula copes well with irregular calendars: missing days, weekends, or leap years change nothing because it searches real values, not assumptions.
  Use this method when you need live, refreshable first-of-month data inside a normal worksheet, especially if you already rely on functions like SUMIFS. Older Excel versions lacking MINIFS can adopt alternative tricks (see “Alternative Methods” below).

Parameters and Inputs

Dates (required) – A contiguous range containing valid Excel date serials (numeric). All items must be actual dates, not text such as \"2023-05-01\". Mixed formats slow calculation and may break comparisons.
Values (required if you need to return another column) – A range the same size as Dates. It can hold numbers, text, or logical values.
Target month/year (required) – You may supply these via a single reference date, separate month/year columns, or even numeric constants (e.g., 3 for March, 2025 for the year).
Optional: Open/close date boundaries – While the formula above auto-builds the month boundary using DATE and EOMONTH, you can pass explicit start/end dates if your fiscal calendar differs from standard calendar months.
Validation rules –

• Ensure Dates and Values have equal row counts so XLOOKUP doesn’t mis-align.
• Avoid blank rows within Dates; MINIFS will ignore blanks but your lookup may find the wrong row if duplicates exist.
  Edge Cases –
• If no entry exists for a particular month, MINIFS returns 0. Wrap the result with IF(Earliest=0,\"N/A\",…) or designate a custom error handler in XLOOKUP.
• If multiple rows share the exact same earliest timestamp, XLOOKUP returns the first physical occurrence. If you must decide ties on another criterion (e.g., minimum invoice number), use an advanced sort strategy (see Example 3).

Step-by-Step Examples

Example 1: Basic Scenario

Imagine a small e-commerce store logging order dates and amounts. In [A1:B11] you have:

Goal: return the first order amount for each calendar month.

Step 1 – Create a lookup table header in [D1:E1] labelled \"Month\" and \"FirstAmount\". Input the months (as dates, e.g., 1-Jan-2023, 1-Feb-2023, …) down column D.

Step 2 – In E2 enter:

=LET(
   Earliest, MINIFS($A$2:$A$10, TEXT($A$2:$A$10, "mmyyyy"), TEXT(D2, "mmyyyy")),
   XLOOKUP(Earliest, $A$2:$A$10, $B$2:$B$10)
)

Copy the formula down. You get 125 (January), 110 (February), 205 (March), 65 (April).

Why it works

• TEXT(date,\"mmyyyy\") is a quick way to evaluate both month and year concurrently using one MINIFS criteria argument.
• MINIFS finds the smallest date that matches, guaranteeing the top-of-month record.
• XLOOKUP fetches the associated Amount from column B.

Troubleshooting
If the result shows 0 or spills as #N/A, confirm that each month in column D exists in the source data. Another common hiccup is dates stored as text; convert them via Data ▸ Text to Columns or VALUE() first.

Example 2: Real-World Application

Scenario: A manufacturing plant runs three shifts and records every production incident (timestamp, machine ID, downtime minutes, root cause). Managers need a monthly “opening incident” to review start-up issues. The dataset spans 60,000 rows across two years stored in an Excel Table named Incidents, with fields [DateTime], [Machine], [MinutesDown], and [Cause].

Business context

• Opening incidents feed into a Power BI dashboard.
• They also kick off preventive maintenance tasks.

Implementation

1. Insert a helper column in the table called [MonthStart]. Formula:

=[@DateTime]-DAY([@DateTime])+1

This normalizes each row to the first of its month, accelerating later aggregation.

2. In a separate “Control” sheet build a Unique list of [MonthStart] with one formula:

=UNIQUE( Incidents[MonthStart] )

Sort ascending with SORT() if desired.

3. Next to that list, retrieve the first incident row:

=LET(
   StartDates,      Incidents[MonthStart],
   Timestamps,      Incidents[DateTime],
   IndexRow,        XMATCH(A2, StartDates, 0, 1),   /* returns first relative position */
   INDEX( Incidents[Cause], IndexRow )
)

Copy right to pull [Machine] and [MinutesDown] too.

Why this solves real business problems

• It automates monthly baseline extraction. Plant managers open one sheet instead of sifting 60k lines.
• INDEX/XMATCH uses the Table’s structured references, resilient to row additions.
• When the table refreshes, the control sheet instantly recalculates, ensuring Power BI always imports current opening incidents via “Publish to PowerBI”.

Performance notes
Storing the helper [MonthStart] drops calculation time because comparisons operate on integers representing identical first-of-month values, rather than evaluating MONTH() and YEAR() thousands of times.

Example 3: Advanced Technique

Edge Case: Multiple logs share the exact first timestamp (e.g., system batches import overnight, stamping 00:00:00 for ten rows). You need the incident with lowest downtime minutes among those duplicates.

1. Build two helper ranges:

• EarliestDate = MINIFS(Dates, Year, y, Month, m)
• Within those tie rows, compute MinimumMinutes = MINIFS( Minutes, Dates, EarliestDate )

2. To pull the corresponding Cause:

=INDEX(
     Causes,
     MATCH(1,
         (Dates=EarliestDate)*(Minutes=MinimumMinutes),
     0)
)

Enter as a dynamic array or old-style Ctrl+Shift+Enter in legacy Excel.

Professional tip
Wrap calculations into LET() for clarity and to prevent recalculating MINIFS twice. On very large files, convert datasets into Power Query and group by Year-Month, then add an “Earliest” aggregate followed by a “Min Minutes” aggregate for tie-breaking—Power Query pushes heavy lifting to memory-efficient columnar engines.

Tips and Best Practices

1. Store dates as proper Excel dates, not text. Use VALUE() or DATEVALUE() when importing CSV logs.
2. Index entire columns (e.g., $A:$A) only on small sheets. Restrict to exact used rows to improve recalculation speed on large models.
3. For recurring month-year grouping tasks, add a helper “YearMonth” column (e.g., `=YEAR(`A2)&TEXT(A2,\"00\")). This simplifies criteria in SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, and MINIFS.
4. Combine LET() with descriptive variable names to make nested logic readable and maintainable.
5. When designing dashboards, place month-year selectors in Data Validation drop-downs. Formulas referencing those cells automatically recalc for any period you choose.
6. After building your solution, test blanks, missing months, ties, and incorrect date formats. Use IFERROR and error-aware XLOOKUP to keep reports user-friendly.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

1. Mixing text dates with serial dates—comparisons silently fail, often returning zero. Confirm with ISNUMBER().
2. Forgetting to lock ranges with absolute references ($A$2:$A$5000). Relative references shift when copied, leading to “wrong month” lookups.
3. Using TODAY() as a boundary in MINIFS inside large models; it forces full recalc every time the workbook opens. Cache TODAY() in a helper cell instead.
4. Assuming months are 30 or 31 rows apart and extracting the first row by OFFSET. This breaks when data gaps occur or during leap years.
5. Not accounting for duplicates on the earliest date. If your process can generate simultaneous entries, always pair date with a secondary discriminator or apply unique sorting rules.

Alternative Methods

When to use each

• Legacy Excel users (pre-2019) should choose the INDEX/MATCH array.
• Interactive ad-hoc analysis? PivotTables give instant answers.
• Massive CSV imports or scheduled pipelines? Power Query’s Group By is superior and memory-efficient.
• Enterprise BI models use DAX so the first-of-month logic lives in a central semantic layer.

FAQ

When should I use this approach?

Use it whenever you need opening values—bank balances, inventory counts, production incidents—aggregated by calendar or fiscal months, and you maintain the data inside Excel rather than a database.

Can this work across multiple sheets?

Yes. Point MINIFS and XLOOKUP to external sheet ranges like Sheet2!$A$2:$A$5000. For many sheets, consolidate them with Power Query first to simplify maintenance.

What are the limitations?

MINIFS cannot operate on closed workbooks, and XLOOKUP is unavailable in Excel 2016 or earlier. Also, extremely large ranges recalculating frequently can slow older PCs—consider Power Query or a database for multi-hundred-thousand-row tasks.

How do I handle errors?

Wrap the final formula:

=IFERROR( YourFormula , "No entry" )

For missing months, test MINIFS result =0. For non-date cells, validate with ISNUMBER(Dates).

Does this work in older Excel versions?

Without MINIFS, switch to an array formula:

=INDEX($B$2:$B$5000, MATCH(MIN(IF(TEXT($A$2:$A$5000,"mmyyyy")=TEXT(D2,"mmyyyy"), $A$2:$A$5000)), $A$2:$A$5000, 0))

Confirm with Ctrl+Shift+Enter. XLOOKUP is replaced by INDEX + MATCH.

What about performance with large datasets?

Restrict ranges, avoid volatile functions, and consider helper columns (pre-computed YearMonth). For datasets above 500k rows, Power Query or Power Pivot will vastly outperform worksheet formulas.

Conclusion

Getting the first entry by month and year is a foundational skill that unlocks a wide range of time-based analyses: opening balances, monthly key performance indicators, and baseline comparisons. By mastering MINIFS with XLOOKUP—or suitable alternatives—you streamline reporting, reduce manual filtering, and build models that stand up to audit scrutiny. Keep practicing on real datasets, explore Power Query for scale, and you will quickly integrate this technique into broader Excel workflows such as dashboards, scenario models, and BI pipelines. Happy analyzing!