Why I use Excel
I’ve been consulting, writing, training and speaking about the use of Excel for analysis, building financial models, budgets and dashboards for many years now and I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been contacted by software providers who’d like “my opinion” on their new software or add-in to Excel which is so much better than plain or, as I like to call it, “vanilla” Excel. Seriously, I get messages about this All. The. Time. So I thought I’d sit down and explain my views on why I stick to Excel.
Having written several books on the subject and hence committed a large part of my career to the use of Excel, I’ve had to seriously consider that perhaps I’m too stuck in my ways to consider any of these new tools. The title of my first Wiley Finance book which has been revised and published three times and sold thousands of copies was “Using Excel for Business Analysis,” so I guess you could say I’m pretty invested in the success of the software.
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Personally, I’ve never been particularly interested in entering any of the financial modelling championship competitions – I suppose I never felt the need to prove anything and it all seemed rather high-stress and hyper-competitive, with the questions being released at all hours of the night. When the new 
The Financial Modeling World Cup is a brand new competition where modellers from all over the world and different backgrounds come together to learn, train and compete. To celebrate the launch of this new initiative, we’ve hosted an Exhibition Round where two expert modellers Dmitrijs Lukaševičs and Dan Mayoh pit their skills against each other and you’ve got front row seats! 
There is a tendency for financial modelling courses to channel the path of investment money through a set of company accounts. Therefore the techniques developed to deal with income and expenditure in this standardised format don’t always suit Real Estate models, especially when a true picture of the investment opportunity is required. In this session, Real Estate Financial Modelling specialist Natalie Bayfield explains why Real Estate assets are different and how to model the income stream from a Commercial Property investment in Excel. 
At the inaugural Financial Modelling Innovation Awards announced at the recent Financial Modelling Virtual Summit, the winner of the “Analysis Accelerators” category was an Excel model using data tables to perform dynamic scenario analysis. Hear from the creator of this winning entry, financial modeller Thomas Paul as he explains how this simple and elegant tool works, and how you can apply it to your own scenario models. This live and interactive virtual meetup is hosted and moderated by Danielle Stein Fairhurst, who was on the judging panel for the awards.
Analytics drives business in an efficient way and predictive analytics uses historical data to predict future events. Business users are using Predictive Analytics to know what it will happen, when will it happen, why will it happen in the business through historical data. At this virtual meetup live event we hear from Excel specialist Rahim Zulfiqar Ali, to look at Forecasting and Regression techniques available in Microsoft Excel to perform predictive analytics. 
With jobs in the finance industry at a premium and the ‘sexy’ areas of Financial Modelling and Analysis becoming more sought-after in the current economic climate both in Australia and globally, it’s never been a better time to brush up on your job search skills. If you’ve been struggling to break into these competitive areas, join us to hear from job search professional (and financial modeller!) 
If you’re working with large quantities of data, slicing, dicing and extracting the information you need for reporting purposes can be a frustrating and time-consuming task. Join us to hear from Excel specialist Celia Alves as she demonstrates how to reduce the time taken to build a summary report in Excel using Advanced Filter, VBA and dynamic ranges. We will also take a brief look at how the new dynamic array formulas can replace Advanced Filter and how Power Query might also be integrated into this type of solution. 
