Description
Staff accountants have specific needs when working with Excel. Unfortunately, their existing Excel knowledge often does not meet these needs. Chief among these are summarizing data quickly and accurately, generating accurate and aesthetically pleasing reports, and creating accounting-centric calculations for elements such as depreciation, amortization, and interest. By participating in this eight-hour session, staff accountants will gain the essential skills to maximize efficiency and accuracy when working with Excel.
This session begins with a quick overview of Excel best practices. It then progresses rapidly into discussions that address PivotTables, sophisticated formulas, Tables, formatting, and working with dates in Excel. Throughout the session, you will learn from accounting-centric examples to reinforce key learning points. In this session, you will learn in a "laptop-friendly" environment, and participants will have access to all the demonstration files. In sum, this seminar is a "must" for all staff accountants seeking to improve their efficiency and accuracy when working with Excel.
Designed For
- Accounting and financial professionals who want to use the power of Excel in common business situations to summarize and analyze data
Objectives
- Staff accountants often need guidance to learn which features can help them create effective Excel workbooks. This course will teach them about many of Excel's accountant-centric features to work more efficiently and generate accurate results.
- List five critical best practices associated with creating workbooks and constructing workbooks that comply with these principles
- Utilize PivotTables and PivotCharts to quickly summarize and present data without generating formulas
- Build sophisticated formulas to assist with reporting and analysis, including those that use functions such as VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, SUMIFS, CHOOSE, XNPV, XIRR, PMT, IPMT, ACCRINT, and TRIM
- Create Tables from ranges of Excel data and identify the primary advantages of working with Tables
- Apply formats quickly and efficiently to Excel reports and understand the importance of features such as the Accounting format, Accounting Underlines, Precision as Displayed, Center Across Selection, and Flash Fill
- Work with date-oriented data in Excel and create calculations - such as those involving depreciation expense and interest accruals - involving the passage of time
Highlights
- Best practices for creating and working with Excel workbooks
- Effectively using Excel functions when creating formulas
- The importance of PivotTables in modern reporting environments
- Best practices for formatting your workbooks
Advanced Prep
- None
Register Now
Leaders
Lawrence McClelland
Mac McClelland, an attorney and accounting professional, is an associate of K2 Enterprises of Hammond, Louisiana, and Network Management Group of Hutchinson, Kansas.
Mac was formerly the director of the Centre for Financial Studies at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, where he lived and worked for seven years from 1990 to 1997. He was also a member of the faculty of the Advanced Business Programme, ranked in the top 100 MBA programs in the world by The Economist, specializing in business strategy and strategic management accounting.