Financial Modelling in Excel

Learn the practical skills needed to construct robust financial models that can be used for business planning and evaluation. You will learn best practice design principles required for building flexible models using a range of financial modelling in excel techniques and functions which are applied when building a detailed financial model case study from scratch.

Delivered in Central London by expert tutors, you will achieve a sound understanding of financial planning and evaluation through a variety of Excel techniques.

Who is it for?

This course is an introduction to financial modelling for those new to the subject. This course assumes a sound understanding of the structure and composition of financial statements, specifically the Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statements.

Timetable

The introduction to financial modelling course takes place one evening a week for 10 consecutive weeks and is taught at our London campus.

City St George's Short Courses follow the academic year, delivering courses over three terms. These include:

• Autumn - October
• Spring - January
• Summer - April

Benefits

Delivered by expert tutors, you will achieve a sound understanding of financial planning and evaluation through a variety of Excel techniques.

On this evening course in Financial Modelling in Excel you will learn to:

• Excel hints, techniques and tips in a financial context
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Best Practice techniques for financial modelling
• How to establish suitable driver based models for forecasting
• Modelling Income Statements, Balance Sheets and Statements of Cash flow
• Sensitivity Analysis
• Ways to minimize errors
• Advanced modelling techniques.

The purpose of the short course isn’t to cover a wide range of functions but to use the functions covered efficiently to build robust and professionally presented financial models.

By the end of the Financial Modelling in Excel course, you will be able to

• Use best practice modelling principles to design and build robust financial models.

Course Outline

The first four weeks of the Financial Modelling in Excel short course cover the necessary groundwork, design principles and functions required to build robust models.

In weeks 5 - 9 these design techniques are put into practice by building a detailed financial model from scratch based on a fictitious retail-based case study.

The short course concludes with a review of further advanced excel techniques including sensitivity analysis.

Scheme of Work

• Week 1 - Keyboard shortcuts, styles and custom formatting
• Week 2 - Financial modelling best practice
• Week 3 - Modelling techniques: summing across sheets, "IF" statements, VLOOKUPs, INDEX & MATCH and conditional formatting
• Week 4 - Drivers: key items which drive financial models
• Week 5 - Start case study: Income Statement, annual projections
• Week 6 - Case study continued: Income Statement, monthly projections
• Week 7 - Case study continued: Income Statement, finalise and complete
• Week 8 - Case study continued: Balance Sheet
• Week 9 - Case study continued: Cash Flow Statement and complete the model plus a brief look at Macros
• Week 10 - Advanced Techniques and course round up

You will be awarded an official City St George's, University of London certificate if you attend over 70 per cent of the classes. The course is not formally accredited.

Assessment

Informal assessment will take place through group discussion, class room activities and questions and answers session as guided by the tutor.

This evening course assumes a sound understanding of the structure and composition of financial statements, specifically the Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statements.

In addition, a good working knowledge of Excel up to using Excel functions is required. At commencement of the course you are expected to be able to:

• Create and move between worksheets
• Improve and modify general layout using different fonts and colours
• Delete, clear, copy and paste cells
• Build formulas with and without Autosum
• Understand the difference between relative, absolute and mixed cell references
• Build IF statements
• Construct graphs.

Please note that the software and operating system used is Excel for Windows and is not suitable for Excel for Mac.

English requirements

Applicants must be proficient in written and spoken English.

Currently there are no books available that cover the entire syllabus or could be categorized as ‘strongly recommended’. However, the following may provide useful background reading:

• The Economist Guide to Business Modelling (John Tennent & Graham Friend)
• Practical Financial Modelling (Jonathan Swan)
• Accounting and Finance for Non-Specialists (Peter Atrill & Eddie McLaney)