Future of Financial Modelling with ChatGPT – or not? (Part 1)
As AI technology evolves rapidly through advances such as ChatGPT, let’s consider how this will impact the financial modelling industry. Join industry leaders Jeff Robson, Lance Rubin and Craig Hatmaker and host Danielle Stein Fairhurst for a virtual meetup to discuss how these technological advancements might impact the process of building a model along with the role and skills of a financial modeller both today and in the future. (more…)
Welcome to a 5-part video series on the “Must-have Excel Functions for Financial Modelling”. If your financial model is showing some returns, growth rates or any outputs that are fluctuating quite a bit over time, it’s useful to see what the compound annual growth rate is for this. In part 4 of this series, we take a look at a couple of different ways to calculate the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) using simple Excel functions. 
If you’ve had any experience building financial models for others to use, you’re probably familiar with the ways users can use and misuse your model. In fact, one of the key sources of financial model error occurs when a model is not used for its intended purpose or users enter invalid inputs which cause incorrect calculations and inadvertent output error. 
It is well-documented that up to 90% of spreadsheets contain errors and although any individual mistake may be small, they can quickly add up. Checking for errors is an important part of the financial model build and there are many native Excel tools that can be used for this purpose. 
Best practice financial modelling in Excel has always been to enter your formulas in blocks. Enter a formula, then copy this across and possibly down also, making sure you have your absolute and relative references set correctly.
What’s the difference between a fractional, virtual or outsourced CFO? How much strategic planning, forecasting and financial modelling do they actually do, or are they just glorified bookkeepers over-charging at CFO rates? A good CFO will build forward-looking financial models to help businesses make better decisions but an external consultant marketing themselves as a fractional, virtual or outsourced CFO can simply manage day to day cashflow, month end and process payroll, receivables and payables, so misrepresenting and devaluing the role of the CFO. 
Summarise the outputs of your financial model using standard Excel skills into a concise, dynamic and visually appealing one-page dashboard report which can effectively communicate the results of your model to be easily interpreted and understood by others at a glance. 
