Automating Excel-Based Financial Statements (Completed)

In this insightful session, Excel expert David Ringstrom, CPA, shows you step-by-step how to create dynamic accounting reports for any month of the year on a single worksheet. As an alternative to building cumbersome worksheets for each month of the year, David explains how to use Excel functions, such as VLOOKUP, OFFSET, and SUM, to quickly create accounting reports that can be toggled to any reporting period with only two mouse clicks. In addition, he outlines how to export data from your accounting package, improve the integrity of your spreadsheets, and incorporate Check Figures and Alarms into you work.

David demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the subscription-based Office 365 version of Excel. David draws your attention to any differences in the older versions of Excel (2019, 2016, 2013, and earlier) during the presentation as well as in his detailed handouts. David also provides an Excel workbook that includes most of the examples he uses during the webcast.

Office 365 is a subscription-based product that provides new-feature updates as often as monthly. Conversely, the perpetual licensed versions of Excel have feature sets that don’t change. Perpetual licensed versions have year numbers, such as Excel 2019, Excel 2016, and so on.

Who Should Attend
Practitioners who would benefit by creating and working with monthly financial statements in a more efficient and effective manner.

Topics Covered

• Building and exporting a 12-month Profit & Loss report from QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop as a model for what to look for when exporting from other applications
• Returning data to an Excel spreadsheet from Microsoft Query
• Seeing how to use the Trusted Document feature in Excel 2010 and later to suppress the Data Connection security prompt
• Modifying queries that return data from other sources into an Excel worksheet
• Automating the extraction of data for a given month or year to date by way of the OFFSET function
• Using the Group command to interactively hide/unhide columns (and/or rows) within Excel worksheets
• Using PowerQuery to overcome nuances in your accounting reports that can make extracting data difficult.
• Creating an in-cell list by way of Excel's Data Validation feature.
• Building and exporting a 12-month Profit & Loss report from QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop as a model for what to look for when exporting from other applications
• Creating an in-cell list by way of Excel's Data Validation feature
• Discovering how Microsoft Query allows you to create self-updating links to databases, spreadsheets, text files, and other data sources

Learning Objectives

• Describe how to create accounting reports for any month of the year on a single worksheet
• Identify and apply Conditional Formatting to draw attention to reports that don't balance to the source data
• Recognize how to export data from an accounting package to create a "set-and-forget" link to accounting data in Excel

Level
Intermediate

Instructional Method
Group: Internet-based

NASBA Field of Study
Computer Software & Applications (2 hours)

Program Prerequisites
Experience Working with Excel Spreadsheets.

Advance Preparation
None