K2's Excel Essentials For Staff Accountants

Staff accountants have specific needs when working with Excel – needs that are often not met by their existing Excel knowledge. Chief among these are the needs to quickly summarize data, prepare accurate and aesthetically pleasing reports, and create 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 they need to maximize their 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 used in the session. In sum, this seminar is a “must” for all staff accountants seeking to improve their efficiency and accuracy when working with Excel.

Basic Course Information

• List five critical best practices associated with creating workbooks and construct workbooks that comply with these principles
• Utilize PivotTables and PivotCharts to summarize and present data quickly, without writing formulas
• Build sophisticated formulas to assist with reporting and analysis, including formulas 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 – that involve the passage of time

• 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