In July 2019 I explained and demonstrated a number of Excel’s financial functions – see below for more details.
CPD note – if you are claiming CPD for watching this recording you need to keep your own records. People who attend the live sessions receive an annual listing of attendances.
In July 2019 following on from the response and feedback from my June webinar, I covered more financial functions. These are more related to comparing and analysing cash flows. I have also included a couple of requested schedules.
This session will cover the following functions
NPV – Net Present Value of regular cashflows (learn to trick to using it correctly)
XNPV – Net Present Value of irregular cashflows
IRR – Internal Rate of Return of regular periodic cashflows
XIRR – Internal Rate of Return of irregular periodic cashflows
Discounted Payback period schedule
Flexible Loan schedule – handles lump sum payments
As with all my sessions, I will throw in a few other shortcuts along the way.
Let’s say you have an input range that covers the whole year. You only want users to make entries in the current month column. How can you limit the month entry? The answer is a custom Data Validation.
When developing budgets and financial models you may need the same rate/value (say debtor days) for 10 months of the year but need to adjust it for 2 months. It is usually December and January as they tend to be a little different due to the Christmas / New Year period. Here’s a couple of ways to handle exceptions in Excel.
Unfortunately Excel doesn’t have an ISDATE function. Excel’s macro language, VBA does, but there is no spreadsheet function that let’s you know if a cell contains a date. Well there is a partial workaround and you can also use VBA.
In March I wrote a post on using a macro to apply column Autofit on a sheet but with a maximum column width. This is a follow up post as someone requested the same functionality for row height.
Keyboard shortcut to insert a Text Box
A quick way to insert a Text Box is by pressing, in sequence (not held down) Alt N X.
A blank Text Box is placed in the middle of the sheet.
Many of Excel’s functions have default arguments. What are arguments? Arguments are the sections within a function that you separate with commas and some of these arguments are optional.
In June 2019 I explained and demonstrated a number of Excel’s financial functions – see below for more details.
CPD note – if you are claiming CPD for watching this recording you need to keep your own records. People who attend the live sessions receive an annual listing of attendances.
These functions take three or more arguments, but there are a few things you need to know to use them correctly. Most involve loans or calculations associated with the time value of money.
This session covered the following six functions
PV – Present Value of future regular cash outflow
PMT – periodic loan repayment calculation
CUMIPMT – cumulative interest – great for loan schedules
RATE – interest rate
FV – future value of regular investment
NPER – number of periods
The session finishes with a loan model that calculates the “missing” value for a loan scenario based on two out of three inputs. The IFERROR function is also discussed.
Excel’s Format as Table feature on the Home ribbon has many advantages. One advantage that isn’t mentioned much is the automatic extension of Data Validations.
Fastest way to copy an image, graphic or chart
To copy an image, graphic or chart simply have the object selected and press Ctrl + D. You can press multiple time to paste multiple times.
If you line the first one up then the others will also line up as you duplicate them.
One of the cardinal rules of Excel is don’t key-in a value into a formula if that value could change. Tracking the value down could be problematic if you need to change the value. Tables can be the solution to avoiding keyed-in values.
In some cases you may have to make manual inputs across multiple cells that are spread across a sheet. Before making the entries you need to clear the existing entries. Creating a range name can make that process much quicker.
Inserting a Comment (renamed to Notes in newer versions of Excel) in the first row and then using Freeze Panes to keep that first row visible can cause issues displaying the Comment (Note). Here’s how to fix it.
In May 2019 I examined and demonstrated some guidelines and techniques for creating charts for dashboards.
CPD note – if you are claiming CPD for watching this recording you need to keep your own records. People who attend the live sessions receive an annual listing of attendances.
When a list is filtered you are only seeing the rows that match the filter. The other rows are still there, just hidden. If you want to make the same entry in a group of filtered cells you can’t use the fill handle to drag and copy as you will overwrite the hidden rows. There is an easy way to do it.
