Microsoft Excel masterclass bundle

Overview:

Excel formulas have evolved dramatically in recent years, yet many finance professionals still rely on techniques developed a decade or more ago. Modern Excel introduces powerful capabilities that can simplify reporting, reduce formula complexity, and create more flexible spreadsheet solutions that are easier to maintain and audit.

In this session, we’ll explore the next generation of Excel formulas and how accountants can use them to work more efficiently with financial data. From dynamic arrays and modern lookup techniques to formula design improvements and single-cell reporting solutions, you’ll learn practical methods that reduce manual effort and help build more reliable spreadsheet models.

We’ll cover:

• Modernise Formula Approaches - Replace older Excel techniques with modern functions that improve flexibility, efficiency and maintainability.

• Create Dynamic Financial Reports – Explore techniques including GROUPBY, PIVOTBY and modern formula combinations to summarise, analyse and report on financial data.

• Cleaner, Smarter, Formula Solutions – No more dragging formulas, fragile VLOOKUPs and nasty nested Ifs. It’s time for the next generation of formulas.

• Improve Spreadsheet Reliability – Design more robust spreadsheet solutions that reduce risk and support long-term usability.

By the end of the session, you’ll be able to build cleaner, more scalable spreadsheet solutions and confidently apply Excel’s modern formula toolkit to everyday accounting and finance tasks.

Overview:

Manually fixing messy accounting reports every single month wastes valuable time and invites costly mistakes. This session introduces you to Excel’s built-in automation engine, designed specifically to take the grunt work out of your monthly close. You will learn how to connect directly to your financial data sources, and clean and combine the data effortlessly without writing a single formula.

Instead of repeating the same tedious data-cleaning steps every month, you will build smart, refreshable processes that update with a single click. We will walk through real-world finance examples, showing you how to stack multiple monthly budget files, handle typical messy data issues, and merge data from other tables automatically.

We’ll cover:

• Connecting to External Data Sources - Learn how to import data from multiple Excel, CSV, PDF, and other structured files, including automating folder-based reporting.
 • Cleaning and Transforming Data - Explore practical steps to reshape data: removing rows, splitting columns, changing data types, unpivoting, and more — all without formulas or VBA.
 • Merging and Appending Queries - Combine data from multiple tables, match lists, and stitch together files with ease using the powerful Merge and Append tools.
 • Loading to Excel and Beyond - Understand how to send your cleaned data to Excel tables, PivotTables, or the data model for seamless reporting and analysis.

By the end of the session, you’ll be equipped to create refreshable data preparation processes for your financial data and will understand why Power Query is an indispensable part of your Excel workflow.

Overview:

Financial data is only valuable when it can be understood and acted upon. Finance professionals are often tasked with turning large volumes of information into reports that support decision-making and communicate performance clearly.

In this session, we’ll build a dynamic financial dashboard from the ground up using modern Excel techniques. Starting with data preparation, we’ll use Power Query to acquire and shape information before combining PivotTables, formulas and interactive reporting features to create a professional dashboard solution.

You’ll learn practical techniques to build reports that are easier to maintain, update independently, and deliver true value.

We’ll cover:

• Prepare Data for Reporting - Use Power Query to acquire, clean and structure financial data for analysis.

• Create Dynamic Financial Analysis – Combine PivotTables and formulas to summarise information and calculate meaningful metrics.

• Create Interactive Reporting Experiences - Use slicers and other interactive controls to allow users to explore financial information dynamically.

• Enhance Dashboard Design and Usability - Apply conditional formatting, dynamic labels and visual techniques that improve clarity and communication.

• Develop a Complete Financial Dashboard Solution - Bring together preparation, analysis and presentation techniques to build a professional reporting dashboard.

By the end of the session, you’ll have built a fully functioning financial dashboard and developed practical techniques for creating reporting solutions that are dynamic, maintainable and ready for real-world finance scenarios.

Alan Murray

Alan Murray is an Excel trainer, founder of Computergaga.com and author of the Advanced Excel Success and Advanced Excel Formulas books. He has been helping people in Excel for over 23 years. He loves training and the joy he gets from knowing he is making peoples working lives easier. Alan’s Computergaga YouTube channel has over 650 videos and over 50 million views. He also runs the monthly London Excel Meetup Group, where people learn, network, and enjoy each other’s company.

The webinar handout material will be available on the webinar platform when you log in to view, 15 minutes before the live webinar start.

If you wish to view or download handout materials, before the day of the webinar, they will also be available through your document library on https://events.accaglobal.com.