Calculating the Term of the Loan

In some loan scenarios, you need to borrow a certain amount at the current interest rates, but you can spend only so much on each payment. If the other loan factors are fixed, the only way to adjust the payment is to adjust the term of the loan: A longer term means smaller payments; a shorter term means larger payments.

You could figure this out by adjusting the nper argument of the PMT() function until you get the payment you want. However, Excel offers a more direct solution in the form of the NPER() function, which returns the number of periods of a loan: