How to Use ROUND, ROUNDUP, and ROUNDDOWN in Excel

Introduction

Spreadsheets full of numbers like 1,247.8351 are hard to read and harder to present. ROUND, ROUNDUP, and ROUNDDOWN give you control over decimal places, and unlike cell formatting, they change the underlying value. That matters when totals need to add up cleanly in invoices, budgets, or financial reports.

The Dataset

Here's a sales report with revenue figures that have too many decimal places:

	A	B
3	Product	Revenue
4	Laptop	1247.8351
5	Monitor	589.4127
6	Keyboard	42.763
7	Headset	315.507
8	Mouse	23.1489

We want to clean these up for a report.

ROUND

ROUND rounds a number to however many decimal places you specify. It follows standard rounding: 5 and above rounds up, below 5 rounds down. The syntax is:

=ROUND(number, num_digits)

number: The value to round.
num_digits: How many decimal places to keep. Use 0 for a whole number.

To round the Laptop revenue to two decimal places:

=ROUND(B4, 2)

The result is 1247.84. The third decimal is 5, so the second decimal rounds up from 3 to 4. Copy the formula down and you get 589.41, 42.76, 315.51, and 23.15 for the rest.

ROUNDUP

ROUNDUP always rounds away from zero, no matter what the next digit is. Use it when values should never come in under the actual amount, like pricing or material estimates. The syntax is:

=ROUNDUP(number, num_digits)

number: The value to round.
num_digits: How many decimal places to keep.

For the Keyboard revenue:

=ROUNDUP(B6, 2)

The result is 42.77. Standard rounding would give 42.76 (the third decimal is 3, which is below 5), but ROUNDUP pushes up regardless. As long as there are digits past the second decimal, it rounds up.

ROUNDDOWN

ROUNDDOWN always rounds toward zero, effectively cutting off extra digits. Use it when you want to be conservative, like estimating available budget or reporting earned revenue to date. The syntax is:

=ROUNDDOWN(number, num_digits)

number: The value to round.
num_digits: How many decimal places to keep.

For the Headset revenue:

=ROUNDDOWN(B7, 2)

The result is 315.50. Standard rounding would give 315.51 (the third decimal is 7, which is 5 or above), but ROUNDDOWN drops everything past the second decimal place.

Comparing All Three

Here's every value run through all three functions with num_digits set to 2:

Product	Revenue	ROUND	ROUNDUP	ROUNDDOWN
Laptop	1247.8351	1247.84	1247.84	1247.83
Monitor	589.4127	589.41	589.42	589.41
Keyboard	42.763	42.76	42.77	42.76
Headset	315.507	315.51	315.51	315.50
Mouse	23.1489	23.15	23.15	23.14

When the next digit is 5 or above, ROUND matches ROUNDUP. When it's below 5, ROUND matches ROUNDDOWN. ROUNDUP and ROUNDDOWN only agree when no rounding is needed.

Key takeaway: ROUND follows standard rounding. ROUNDUP always rounds away from zero. ROUNDDOWN always rounds toward zero. Choose based on whether you need the nearest value, a ceiling, or a floor.

Rounding Beyond Decimals

A negative num_digits rounds to the left of the decimal point, so you can round to the nearest ten, hundred, or thousand.

num_digits	Rounds To	ROUND(1247.8351, ...)
2	Hundredths	1247.84
1	Tenths	1247.8
0	Whole number	1248
-1	Nearest ten	1250
-2	Nearest hundred	1200
-3	Nearest thousand	1000

=ROUND(B4, -2)

This returns 1200, rounding 1247.8351 to the nearest hundred. ROUNDUP and ROUNDDOWN accept negative values the same way.

Conclusion

ROUND for standard rounding, ROUNDUP when you need to round away from zero, ROUNDDOWN when you want to truncate. All three accept negative num_digits values for rounding to tens, hundreds, or thousands.

For more on the functions you'll often pair with rounding, check out our guide on SUM, AVERAGE, and COUNT.