Excel Formula's Accountants & Financial Professionals Need to Know

We cover both. You'll learn VLOOKUP so you understand why it's limited—it only works if your data is sorted correctly, can only look to the right of the first column, and is slow with large datasets. Then we show you XLOOKUP, which solves all those problems. XLOOKUP is faster, more flexible, and lets you specify exactly which column to search and which to return, so it's the last lookup formula you'll ever need.

This course is designed for financial professionals who use Excel but want to work more effectively. There are no prerequisites listed, and the instructor teaches at a Basic program level, so you don't need advanced experience. That said, you should be comfortable opening a workbook and entering data into cells—the course assumes that baseline.

Every formula demonstrated is one the instructor uses daily in his own practice. The examples show real accounting scenarios: calculating depreciation on asset lists, analyzing budget versus actual variances using conditional logic, cleaning messy bank feeds with text functions, and pulling live financial data using Power Query. You'll see exactly how to structure a workbook your client will actually use.

Excel handles large data better than most people expect, especially with Power Query and dynamic arrays. The instructor demonstrates working with thousands of rows and shows how to set up queries that refresh automatically when your source data changes. That said, if you need to write to data, enforce complex constraints, or support many simultaneous users, a database is the right tool—but for reporting and analysis on top of existing data, Excel will serve you well.

The course is almost entirely live demonstration in Excel. You download sample files at the start, and the instructor walks through formulas, builds tables, creates lookups, and sets up Power Query connections while you watch and can follow along. About 90% of the session happens inside actual workbooks, not PowerPoint slides—you see exactly where to click and what to type.