VLOOKUP Approximate Match (TRUE / 1): Tax Slabs & Tiered Discounts

VLOOKUP Approximate Match (TRUE / 1)

While 90% of business lookups require exact matching, financial modeling requires Approximate Match for tiered brackets (Income Tax Slabs, Order Volume Discounts, Commission Tiers).

1. The Strict Rule of Approximate Match

[!IMPORTANT] The first column of your lookup table MUST be sorted in strictly Ascending order (lowest to highest). If it is not sorted, TRUE will produce random wrong results!

2. How Approximate Match Works

Excel searches down column 1 until it finds the largest value that is less than or equal to your lookup value:

Units Range      Discount
0                0%
100              5%
500              10%
1000             15%

• If a customer buys 350 units, Excel checks: 350 >= 100, but < 500. So it stops at 100 and returns 5%!

=VLOOKUP(C2, $F$2:$G$6, 2, TRUE)