Help and ideas for busy numbers people
I’m a late adopter of Cell Styles in Excel. Before I started doing financial modelling and consulting work for other people, I didn’t really appreciate how useful they were.
I wish I’d learned them a lot earlier as they would have been helpful in earlier roles, too.
Continue reading “Why you should use Cell Styles in Excel”
This blog post sets out how to prevent or fix #SPILL errors in Excel Tables. Contrary to what Microsoft Help says, they might sometimes be fixable.
Continue reading “How to fix #SPILL errors in Excel Tables”How do you connect to a Sharepoint folder in Power Query if you don’t have “from Sharepoint folder” as an option?
Continue reading “No “From Sharepoint Folder” option in Power Query? No problem!”
I was going to write a detailed guide about using flags in financial modelling. However, there’s already a really good one here, as part of the ICAEW’s financial modelling good practice guide(s).
So instead I’ll just write something more simple to explain why you might want to use flags in financial modelling. And add a specific point about dynamic arrays, which are a newish development in Excel.
Continue reading “Using flags in financial modelling”Here are five tips for using Googlesheets if you normally use Excel.
If you’ve imported it from Excel, it might still be an Excel file that’s being read by Google in compatibility mode. You can tell because name and file type of the workbook will end in XLSX.
This is the worst of both worlds, as you are getting neither Excel nor Google functionality. Save the file as a Google sheet (in the file menu)
I attended the Global Excel Summit 2024 online earlier this month, and in no particular order, here are ten things I learned.
The most inspiring session was given by two people who work for Chanel, who explained how they had used Power Query to reduce thousands of hours of processing time.
In the middle of a day that was focussed on the theoretical uses of AI, it was fantastic to hear about a tried and tested but scandalously underused technology being used to deliver real business change.
More generally their approach to business process improvement sounded fascinating and I’d love to see this become more widely known.
Continue reading “Ten things I learned at the Global Excel Summit 2024”
At a recent webinar, the presenter led by suggesting that in these tough economic times there is more of a need for live financial data. (They may have been selling a product).
I think it’s much more about the decisions that you need to take from the financial data.
Continue reading “The need for live financial data (or not)”
I’ve spent quite a lot of time in my professional career thinking about why companies don’t pay invoices on time. As a finance director and as a freelancer, I have experience of both sides of the fence.
I’ve written this post to help freelancers understand the blocks that they might face and how to overcome them.
Continue reading “Why companies don’t pay invoices on time”
I recently designed and delivered some Excel training for auditors. Specifically, it was Excel training for audit trainees who had just started at the firm.
I benefitted enormously at the start of my career when my employer arranged for all new audit trainees to have Excel training as part of our induction. Even though it was pretty basic, it established a good grounding in things like formula construction, absolute and relative cell references, and a few shortcuts.
Continue reading “Excel training for auditors”
Last month I fulfilled a long-held ambition by cycling from Bristol to London using (mostly) the Great Western Way. As I couldn’t find many first hand posts about other people doing this, I thought I’d write one.
Warning: This post has no Excel or finance content whatsoever.
Continue reading “Cycling the Great Western Way from Bristol to London”