How to calculate the future value of an investment
✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 ✓ Verified in Google Sheets (2026-08-30)What a regular contribution grows to — how much a fixed monthly or yearly deposit is worth after N periods at a given rate.
The formula
| App | Formula | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Excel (desktop) | =FV(rate, nper, pmt, [pv]) | rate & nper must match the period: monthly uses rate/12 and years*12. Enter deposits (pmt) as NEGATIVE (cash out); FV returns a positive balance. |
| Google Sheets | =FV(rate, nper, pmt, [pv]) | Identical. Add a starting balance as the 4th argument [pv], also negative. |
| LibreOffice Calc | =FV(rate, nper, pmt, [pv]) | Identical. |
How it works
FV(rate, nper, pmt) compounds a stream of equal payments to the end of the term. Here $100 invested each year (pmt = -100, negative because it leaves your pocket) for 3 years at 10% grows to $331 — your $300 of deposits plus $31 of compounding. The sign convention trips people up: money you pay in is negative and the value you get back is positive, so a positive pmt would return a negative FV. Match the rate to the period — for monthly contributions use rate/12 and nper = years×12 — and add an existing lump sum as the optional [pv] argument (also negative). Set the final [type] argument to 1 if deposits happen at the start of each period rather than the end. For a single lump sum with no recurring payments, FV(rate, nper, 0, -pv) is just pv×(1+rate)^nper (see calculate-compound-interest).
Verified, not just documented
We ran =FV(B1,B2,B3) in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned 331 — exactly the expected result. We then ran the same formulas in Google Sheets, executed 2026-08-30: a formula-only workbook goes into Google Drive, which converts it to a Sheet and recalculates every formula with Google’s own engine, and comes back out as .xlsx carrying the values Google computed. It returned 331 for the worked example, the same value LibreOffice produced. Both engines’ numbers on this page are executed results. The Excel formula follows Microsoft’s official documented syntax — we do not run desktop Excel.
Functions used
FV — see full Excel, Google Sheets & LibreOffice compatibility for each.