Automating Excel-Based Financial Statements (Currently Unavailable)

Author: David H. Ringstrom

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 use Power Query to automatically update your financial reports. David demonstrates every technique at least twice: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the subscription-based Microsoft 365 (formerly 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. Microsoft 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.

Publication Date: August 2021

Designed For
Practitioners who would benefit by creating and working with monthly financial statements in a more efficient and effective manner.

Topics Covered

• Adding a refinement to the SUMIFS function to allow the report to consolidate numbers or display departmental values
• Automating the extraction of data for a given month or year to date by way of the OFFSET function
• 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
• Consolidating financial statement exports from two or more entities by appending queries within Power Query
• Creating a 12 month P&L report from QuickBooks Desktop and then exporting to the comma-separated value (CSV) format to streamline analysis
• Creating a workbook with just two worksheets that will present data for any month of the year
• Creating an in-cell list by way of Excel's Data Validation feature
• Creating self-updating financial spreadsheets by using Power Query in Excel 2010 and later to pull data via automated queries that also overcome common issues in exported reports
• Discovering how to incorporate Check Figures and Alarms into your work
• Seeing how to use the Trusted Document feature in Excel 2010 and later to suppress the Data Connection security prompt
• Understanding the use of the MONTH function to return the month portion of a date or month name

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
• Identify which keyboard shortcut enables you to create a new workbook
• Identify which key enables you to delete a column within Power Query
• Recognize the maximum number of criteria pairs you can use with the SUMIFS function
• Identify which ribbon tab the Conditional Formatting feature appears on
• Recognize which menu tab does Append Query appears on within Power Query

Level
Intermediate

Instructional Method
Self-Study

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

Program Prerequisites
Experience Working with Excel Spreadsheets.

Advance Preparation
None