Financial Reporting Tips and Tricks

Author: David H. Ringstrom

Financial reporting is often rife with repetitive tasks and carries the risk of misstated numbers. In this webcast, Excel expert David Ringstrom, CPA, will show you ways to create an utilize financial reporting templates, both as workbooks and worksheets, that you can use as clean slates. You'll also see how to create financial reports from a general ledger report by way of using pivot tables. You can then filter the pivot table with both the Slicer and Timeline features. Each month you'll simply save over the existing general ledger report and your spreadsheet-based reports will update automatically.

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: September 2021

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

Topics Covered

• Using Power Query to extract data from text files, accounting software, and other data sources
• Adding rows to a blank pivot table to create instant reports
• Applying a consistent look and feel to your charts by way of chart templates
• Combining the VLOOKUP and MATCH functions to summarize income statement data for use in a waterfall chart
• Enlivening staid lists of numbers with the Data Bars conditional formatting
• Filtering data within pivot tables in Excel 2010 and later by way of the Slicer feature
• Filtering data within pivot tables based upon date ranges in Excel 2013 and later by way of the Timeline feature
• Filtering pivot tables to show fewer columns and/or rows of data
• Illustrating financial statements with the Waterfall chart in Excel 2016 and later
• Illustrating numbers within a list by using the Icon Sets conditional formatting

Learning Objectives

• Recognize which menu option on Excel's File menu enable you to search for free spreadsheet templates
• Identify the chart type in Excel 2016 and later that is particularly suited to presenting financial statements in chart form
• Describe the default file extension for chart templates
• Identify which command on Excel's File menu enables you to search for free spreadsheet templates
• Recognize which Windows Environment Command gives you fastest access to the Application Data folder where your templates are stored
• Describe the arguments the VLOOKUP function has
• Identify which command enables you to import cell styles from another open workbook
• Recognize which menu in Excel the Pivot Table command appears on
• Identify which keystroke enables you to select two or more items from a Slicer

Level
Intermediate

Instructional Method
Self-Study

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

Program Prerequisites
Experience Working with Excel Spreadsheets Recommended.

Advance Preparation
None