Here are some great Excel keyboard shortcuts, which all financial modelling professionals should know about. All of these Excel Ctrl shortcuts can greatly improve the speed, efficiency and accuracy when building or editing financial models.
Excel Traffic Lights
There are many ways to verify or analyse financial outputs. Clearly all financial outputs must be correct, but the financial analyst must be able to deliver added value via summaries, dashboard and Excel charts. This article and video will focus primarily on Excel Traffic Lights, via Excel Conditional Formatting, in order to improve the analytical demonstration of high-level financial performance
5 Potential Problems using Excel VLOOKUP
This financial model illustrates the potential problems or pitfalls with the Excel VLOOKUP function in financial analysis. In this example, we are using a VLOOKUP to reference the Last price for the following Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks.
Excel Data Validation to prevent duplicate cells
In some financial models, such as cash payments spreadsheet, there is an inherent need to safeguard unique invoice number inputs.
Put simply, spreadsheet must be prevented from inputting duplicate cell values. Excel Data Validation is a fast, effective and macro-free solution, which will improve the financial model and prevent erroneous, duplicate input cells.
Sorting data without Excel Data Sort
Here is a simple macro-free alternative to Excel Data Sort, which will seamlessly sort data in a financial model or spreadsheet.
How to create a Precedent Drop-down list in Excel
A Precedent Drop-down list, like a dependent drop-down list, is a robust tool to incorporate in a best practice financial model, because it will restrict user inputs based on a previous drop-down list.