Why Combine Excel and Power BI?

Microsoft Excel is one of the most powerful spreadsheet tools in the world, and Power BI takes that power to the next level. By learning how to integrate the two, you’ll be able to:

• Create dynamic dashboards and real-time reports
• Analyze large datasets without the limitations of Excel
• Build automated reports and streamline your workflow
• Present data visually for faster, clearer insights

If you’re already comfortable with Excel formulas, pivot tables, and charts, Power BI is your next logical step.

What Makes This the Best Excel Power BI Course?

This course is designed specifically for Excel users who want to make the leap into Power BI with confidence. Here’s what makes it stand out:

Tailored for Excel Users

Starting with familiar concepts and building upon them, the course will show you how Excel knowledge translates directly into Power BI functionality.

Step-by-Step Learning

No fluff. No unnecessary theory. Just clear, structured lessons that take you from beginner to confident Power BI user.

Real-World Examples

Learn by doing. You’ll work with real business scenarios to build dashboards, clean and transform data, and create powerful reports.

Expert Instruction

Your instructor is a seasoned Power BI professional with a background in Excel training, business intelligence, and real-world data projects. You’re learning from someone who uses these tools every day.

Lifetime Access + Support availability

Enroll once and come back anytime. Get updates, support, and access to a community of fellow learners.

CREATE AMAZING DASHBOARDS IN POWER BI

The Best way to Creat Amaing Dashboards in Power BI

What You’ll Learn

• How to connect Excel to Power BI
• Data modeling and transformation using Power Query
• Creating compelling reports and dashboards
• Introduction to DAX (Data Analysis Expressions)
• Best practices for data visualization
• Publishing and sharing reports across your organization

Who Is This Course For?

This course is ideal for:

• Excel power users who want to enhance their reporting skills
• Business analysts and managers who need faster, clearer data insights
• Beginners in Power BI who already know Excel and want a smoother transition

Ready to Master Power BI?

Stop struggling with outdated spreadsheets. Learn how to harness the power of modern business intelligence tools and become the go-to data expert in your team.

Enroll in the Best Excel Power BI Course Today and start your journey toward becoming a Power BI pro.

Start Today with this Power BI Course for Excel

The post Best Excel Power BI Course for 2025: Learn from the Experts appeared first on Excel Zoom.

Here we explore 10 essential Excel tricks that every auditor should know to save time, improve accuracy, and stay ahead of the curve! Plus, we’ll introduce you to a tool that can take your audit workflow to the next level and wow your workmates.

1. Custom Formatting for Clarity
   Let’s start with something simple, yet often overlooked. Custom number formats make your data easier and more user friendly to read. For example, display negative numbers in red and format dates to match your preferred style. It’s a simple tip which literally takes seconds to implement and will add to the professional look of your audit. Do this as standard with all your work.
   
   How to Do It:
   
   Select your range of cells.
   Go to Home > Format Cells and choose the desired number format.
   
   
2. Keyboard Shortcuts to Save Time
   Speed up your workflow by mastering shortcuts. If you can’t remember them, list them down somewhere easy to reference. The more you use them the more they will become second nature. Shortcuts drastically speed up production. Here are three to get you started.
   
   Ctrl + T: Convert a range into a table.
   Alt + =: Automatically sum a column or row.
   Ctrl + Shift + L: Apply or remove filters.
   
   
3. Conditional Formatting for Quick Insights
   Again, another simple yet effective practice is to highlight points of interest making it easier for the user to read. Automate highlighting discrepancies or trends in seconds with Excel’s conditional formatting feature. For instance, use conditional formatting to flag duplicate entries or outliers in financial data.
   
   Example:
   
   Highlight your range.
   Go to Home > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cell Rules > Duplicate Values.
   
   
4. Using PivotTables for Quick Summaries
   PivotTables are massively powerful and lifesavers when analyzing large datasets. They allow you to summarize and categorize data without complex formulas and let you refresh if your raw data changes – so you only do the work once. You should learn how to use these and insert them wherever appropriate.
   
   How to Create One:
   
   Select your data.
   Go to Insert > PivotTable and drag fields into rows, columns, and values.
   
   
5. Data Validation for Accuracy
   This is a big one! Prevent errors by restricting data input in specific cells. We have all created an awesome spreadsheet only for some user to come along and break it by inserting some invalid entry into a vital cell. It always seems to break so much more than intended too! Get around this by getting used to restricting data input (or using things like drop down lists where appropriate). For example, you can ensure that only numbers within a certain range are entered. Thank us later!
   
   How to Set It Up:
   
   Go to Data > Data Validation and define your criteria.
   
   Checkout more Excel Validation Tips
   
   
6. Audit Tickmarks for Professional Documentation
   Tickmarks are essential for documenting audit work, but creating them manually in Excel can be tedious and time consuming. Having a specialist toolbar is a cheap and effective way of saving time and standardising your work.
   
   Solution:
   The Audit Tickmark Toolbar simplifies this process by adding pre-designed tickmarks directly to your Excel sheets, saving you hours of manual work and giving your work that professional touch.
   Discover how the Audit Tickmark Toolbar can improve your audit workflow. Click here to learn more.
   
   
7. VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP for Efficient Lookups
   There are many functions in Excel to master but as an auditor, here are two you need to be familiar with. Quickly find values in a dataset with these formulas:
   
   VLOOKUP: For vertical lookups.
   XLOOKUP: A more powerful version that handles both vertical and horizontal lookups.
   
   
8. IFERROR for Cleaner Formulas
   No one likes to see errors in a spreadsheet. Even if they are valid it just looks messy and unprofessional. To the untrained eye, it looks like something is inherently wrong or broken. So stop displaying messy errors in your worksheets by wrapping your formulas in an IFERROR function.
   
   Example:
   =IFERROR(VLOOKUP(A2, B2:D10, 2, FALSE), “Not Found”)
   
   
9. Protecting Sheets and Workbooks
   Similar to tip 5, you will thank us later for this one. All the pro’s do it and for good reason. Safeguard sensitive data by protecting sheets or workbooks with passwords. Don’t let someone edit your spreadsheet who may not realise they are inadvertently breaking something else with their simple amendment. Better they come to you or require a password so they know they are meddling in something important and need to think through the consequences.
   
   How to Protect a Sheet:
   Go to Review > Protect Sheet and set a password.
   
   
10. Automate Repetitive Tasks with Macros
    Macros can automate repetitive tasks, like formatting or data extraction, with just one click.
    
    How to Record a Macro:
    Go to Developer > Record Macro, perform your task, and stop recording.
    Get started by opening the VBA editor and have a play. It is powerful stuff and worth getting familiar with how macros work (and more importantly, how they can work for you!)

Conclusion: Take Your Audit Workflow to the Next Level
By mastering these Excel tricks, you not only save time but also improve the quality of your work. But why stop there?

With tools like the Audit Tickmark Toolbar, you can take efficiency to a whole new level by automating one of the most time-consuming parts of the audit process and making your work look super professional at the same time.

Ready to transform your audit workflow? Try the Audit Tickmark Toolbar today.

We hope some of these tips make it into your daily workflow. They all incrementally improve your audit skills by a small amount but when added together, help make a huge difference to your perceived proficiency, the quality of your work and save you significant time getting the job done. Good luck and happy auditing.

Working as an Accountant? See Top Excel Tips for Accountants

The post 10 Essential Excel Tricks Every Auditor Must Know appeared first on Excel Zoom.

Open Excel VBA Editor

To open Excel visual basic editor,

Click the visual basic button on the developer tab.

If the Developer tab is not present, go to File -> Options -> customize ribbon and tick Developer.

You can also open VBA in Excel using Alt + F11 keyboard shortcut.

What is the VBA Editor

Great, now you’re in the editor, what is it? Microsoft Excel’s Visual basic editor can be referred to as, VBA editor, VB editor and even VBE. It is all the same thing. It’s the place where you can create macros and write scripts in Excel VBA.

The most basic sections of the editor is the Project View in which you can see modules listed down the left hand side. Think of this like a folder for your macros. Modules contain the code that is required for your macros to work. Its beyond the scope of this article to go into how to split out your code into objects but modules gives the user a powerful tool to create efficient and well organized code.

To get started writing code you will need to create a new module. Add a new module in VBA editor by clicking on VBAProject(Book1), right click, Insert Model. Delete a module by simply right clicking, Remove Module. Excel will prompt you to confirm before deleting.

Record a Macro in Excel

Recording a macro in Excel is a great way to automate tasks as well as a great tool to help learn more VBA code. A common trick is to record a macro and then review the VBA code to see how it works. Now you know how to open the VBA editor in Excel you should be able to record a macro, open the editor and view the code. You’ll see the system generated VBA can be messy but it will give you the key snippets of code needed for the desired action. These can be things as simple as formatting, copying, pasting, deleting or selecting a sell. Alternatively, you could get quite advanced and carry out entire tasks before going into the Excel visual basic editor to review the code.

The world really is your oyster when you get started recording macros in excel. Top tip is to start with small steps. You can always bulk all your small macros into one at a later stage but when it comes to reviewing each step its useful to keep it separate, at least when you are first getting started.

 Run a Macro in Excel VBA Editor

Once you have entered the VBA editor, created a module and written some code you will want to run the code.

To run VBA code in VBA editor simply click the Run Macro button which is shaped like a small green triangle on the toolbar. You can also Run Macro in Excel VBA editor by pressing F5 shortcut.

This is a very quick introduction to show you how to open VBA in excel, create a new module and also run your macro once written. To write some actual code, as we have suggested above, a great tip is to record macros and then go back and review the code in the MS Excel VBA editor. You’ll be surprised how messy the generated VBA can get but it will give you the key snippets of VBA code you need to get started with Excel VBA programming and is a great way of learning the syntax of VBA. Alternatively, Google is your best friend when it comes to writing macros. So what are you waiting for, press Alt + F11 in Excel and get coding in VBA!

What to do next? REad our quick Introduction to VBA for MS Excel

The post How to Open Excel VBA Editor appeared first on Excel Zoom.

One of the most widely used tool for accountants and managers is none other but MS Excel . Spreadsheets are around us for quite some time and they have been developed in to a handy tool. Some of them are propriety like Microsoft office and some can be used under creative commons license like open office. When it comes to collaboration or sharing data, google sheets take the top position.

In this post we are going to share 10 features of spreadsheets or Top 10 Excel Skill for accountants that are essential for accounts. Mastering these skills will help them become more productive with spreadsheets. Here are they:

Use of Keyboard Shortcuts:

You can also use built in short cut keys to perform certain action and if the option you are looking or is not available through shortcut keys! You can record also your own macros. Here are 10 shortcut keys that are most often used by excel user.

A user can always use mouse or pointing device to point to an option but they can be certainly more productive if they use keyboard instead. In recent version of MS Excel, you can invoke a hint to short cut keys but pressing Alt-Key from keyboard. Following the indicated character, you can access almost any option in the toolbar.

Thus by pressing Alt+N will take you to the Insert Tab.

Presenting Data with Charts:

It is always easy to understand data with Graphs. Excel comes with variety of options to plot graphs to represent your data. Here are some hints on using Excel Charts to make your reports interesting to read:

Use Bar and Line Charts – This is the best option if you want to plot time series data i.e. data over weeks, months and years. The bars clearly represent the plotted quantity and is really to read when it comes to comparison. (Shortcut keys: Bar Chart: Alt+N+C, Line Chart:Alt+N+L+N)

Use Pie Chart – when you want to show percentage of each component or breakup of something. You can use either absolute values or percentage. (Shortcut keys: Bar Chart: Alt+N+Q)

Scatter Plot – When you have data points and you want to explore the trend, just plot it using scatter plot. (Shortcut keys: Bar Chart: Alt+N+D)

Add a Trend line – Add a trend line to you Bar and Line Charts and your scatter plot, you can even get the expression and fit for the plotted data to understand the relationship.

Use The Excel Audit Toolbar

Whether you are performing an in depth audit or simply checking back a balance sheet, using a simple tool like the Excel Audit Toolbar can save you signifanct time and effort while at the same time giving your work a professional standardized finish. Clients love it and users rave at the time it saves them. You can learn more about the Audit Toolbar for Accountants here.

Use Pivot Table to Summarize Data:

When you have data in the form of list, the best option available to you to analyze it is a Pivot Table. With pivot table, you can manipulate data to great extend and you can be really quick in creating scenarios for your data.

You can insert a pivot table by using short cut key Alt+N+V. Add fields to Filter, Column, Rows and Values and select whether you want to sum, count or average the data. Besides built in functions, you can also create your own “Calculated Fields” and “Calculated Items” to shape your data. Calculated Fields are Fields that are defined by formula – for example if commission on sales in 10%, you can create a new calculated field “Commission” by multiplying sales with 10% value. A calculated item is created by manipulating items in a given field.

Understand How Cell Referencing Works:

There are four ways you can format your cell reference:

1. Keep row constant and column changeable –A$1, in this example, the $ before the row number (1 here) will keep it row one only. This is useful when you want drag formula downwards
2. Keep row moveable and column constant –$A1, in this example, the $ before the column number (A here) will keep it to one column only. This is useful when you want drag formula to right or left side.
3. Keep both row and column constant $A$1 – a dollar sign before both row and column means nothing can move.
4. Keep both row and column moveable – A1 this will make row and columns both moveables.

Understanding cell referencing style is important when you are using formulas across the worksheet and you want to refer to a cell a constant – (for example a cell contain the value of pi).

Using Formula Auditing Toolbar:

Formulas are an essential part of spreadsheet. Large spreadsheet tend to contain error that can totally destroy the purpose of the sheet – some of the error are obvious and easily identify error and other are semantic error that tend to give you the result but an erroneous one. All of such formula activity can be checked for using the formula auditing tool bar.

The toolbar is present in Formula Tab. There is a whole bunch of options there to examine how formula is executed, to trace precedent and dependent cells and for tracing errors. Certainly this is one of the most useful features for accountants as they may want to create and then audit their own sheets.

Using Data Validation:

Data Validation allows excel sheet users to specify what type of content a cell can hold or if it can hold something at all or not.  With  data validation in effect, the user can control generate an error message if the  user try to enter something invalid or try to put something in cell that is not allowed for editing.

There are options available to allow entry of any value, whole numbers or floats, date and time, list, text length or a custom formula. The most useful option out of this is the list that allows user to select from a set of options. The next most useful option could be the one for entering integer numbers only. The custom formula allows you to set conditions using Excel’s build in formulas.

Understanding What If Analysis Tools:

What if analysis Tools are a bunch of tools that are used to analyses scenario and what-if cases. There are three options available under it: Scenario Manager, Goal Seek and the Data Tables. The scenario manager creates scenarios by asking user for the variables to be changed and naming them as different scenarios. The user keep naming the scenario and referring to the cells whose value will be changed resulting in a list of scenarios to be used.

The Goal seek option works by iterating through values until certain requirement is meet – for example if you set up a sheet with a formula where you wanted variable X to be 200 for some value of variable Y, the goal seek will keep iterating until it reaches corresponding value of Y.

The Data Table is good when you want to have more then one scenario to be displayed at once. Infect you can have a single scenario like displayed by scenario manager.

Repeating Last Action Quickly:

The easiest way to repeat the last action is to press F4. If you have formatted a cell with yellow fill and you want another cell to be formatted the same way, just press F4. If you have copied something and wanted to paste on multiple cells, select them and press F4.

Selecting Certain Type of Cells Only:

A Spreadsheet contains formulas, numbers, text and blank or non blank cells. We may want select only cells that belong to certain type for example only cells with formulas or only blank cells. In such situation the option of “Go To” is really handy.

The option can be found by pressing F5 that will ask you what to select. You can select more than one choices at a time as well. For example you want to select all the blank cell and put text “absent” on each of them. You will press F5, select blank that will select all the blank cells, write “absent” and will press ctrl+enter to have it in all selected cells.

Printing Sheet With Grid Lines and Headers:

When you are tired to starring at PC’s screen and want to have break, it is good idea to print you sheet focus on paper version of your sheet. But simply printing a sheet will not be of much help as there will be no header row and column to understand the formulas.

It is possible to print a sheet with header row and column and grid lines with following options from print preview > page layout menu:

Conclusion:

There are countless features of Excel that a user uses depending upon the work requirement so this list is not exhaustive by any means. Did we missed anything important? Please use comments section to tell us. Thank you! Happy Excelling!

The post 10 Must Have Excel Skills for Accountants appeared first on Excel Zoom.

There are two ways of organizing your data in Excel, either it could be a list or it could be a excel table. Both has its advantages and disadvantages. In today’s post, we will try to learn about the later and see how to get most out of it – i.e. excel tables.

Tables are identified by a header row and a column, where is for list, there is only a header row. Tables are good when you want to summarize the information. The conventional table can be created by simply putting borderline around the data, but for a table to be an excel table, you need to apply the table formatting to it using the ribbon menu or simply press CTRL+T as you have selected the data.

You can apply formatting according to your choice of color. This is the table produced by applying table formatting.

Using options in Table Design Ribbon:

There are number of options available to format layout of the table. Here are they listed with some explanation.

Header Row:

This will add the header row for the table. For our case it is months listed in the Row # 3.

Banded Rows:

Enabling this option will show the horizontal border lines in the table cells.

Banded Columns:

Enabling this option will show the vertical border lines in the table cells.

Total Row:

This will automatically add a total row to the bottom of the table – if you have added the total column then it will be added to the total column. More on this in later section of articles.

First Column:

This option will turn First column Text bold.

Last Column:

This option will turn Last column Text bold.

Other Options Available:

The Excel table can be exported to SharePoint and the data can be refreshed from the option given. We can also refresh the range of the table in we have put more rows or columns in it and also there is an option to remove duplicates from the table.

Adding Subtotals to the Last Row:

Adding subtotals to the last row is easy – you can go to table design menu, select add total row and it’s done. By default, it is added to the last column to the right if you have added the total column. But it could be added to any column in the table.

The last row can display variety of functions beside the default SUM function. We can have average, max, min and count functions as well for our tables.

There is even an option to get more functions for the table, just click more functions to access all the functions.

Consolidating data present in Tables:

This will work even if the data is not present in tables, but works a treat if it is an excel table, as you have already that subtotal function added to you data. In order for consolidation option to work, you need to have multiple table of similar format on different sheets. Just as shown in the following diagram:

The process starts by laying down three similar tables, and a similar table for summary. Then we point to the ribbon and go to tab “Data” and select he consolidates option. A menu pops up asking for few following options:

Function to be used:

This option lists down what type of function would you like to use – there are around a dozen of functions available like: Sum, Count, Average, Min, Max, Product and so on. We can use these functions as per our requirement.

Further Advantages of Using Tables:

With using data tables, it becomes really easy to enter data as the table keeps expanding as we enter data. This is done with the help of a small blue box that appears in the last row of the table. As reach the cell with this box and press Enter, a new row is automatically added the.

1. There is no need to drag down the formulas or flash fill formulas, the formulas in excel table is automatically filled. We just need to enter on the top row and the rest of the column is filled automatically.
2. There is no need for freezing panes when working with a table. With non-excel tables, we need to freeze pans so that when we scroll, we can see the header row, but with excel tables the header row is always visible.
3. You don’t need to the total row, as already described in the previous sections. Infect you can use anything besides sum to summarize the sheet.
4. There is a lot of ease in creating charts. If you are making tables the basis of the chart, the data in the chart will be updated automatically and there is no need for manually dragging ranges.

Conclusion:

Tables are handy features of MS Excel. They are useful because they allow better management of data, easy calculations and stigmatization.  Please download the file from this link and see how it actually works.

The post What are MS Excel Tables – Tips and Tricks appeared first on Excel Zoom.

COUNTIF () function constitutes a family of functions that is used for counting and specially for counting conditionally. We said that COUNTIF () is a family because there are few other similar function that are present in Excel that starts with COUNTIF.

These functions include COUNTIFS() that is used for counting more than one criteria, COUNTA () that is used to count the cells in a range that are not empty, COUNTBLANK () that is for counting blank cells and the function COUNT itself.

In today’s post we will explore the instances where these functions can be used. We will take up examples and understand which function best suits the situation and how that functions works to give the desired result.

An overview of COUNT family syntax:

Follow table gives the outline of the COUNT family functions:

If you look closely, the COUNTIF has become a special case of COUNTIFS() where criteria is set to one only. Let’s take-up few examples of how we can use COUNTIFS() function.

A simple COUNTIF() function:

Lets consider the following sample database, where we want to count the number of female student in a class:

We can use COUNTIF function to count the number of FEMALES in the data. The formula will be:

=COUNTIF(F2:F41,”F”)

Thus there are twenty three females in the said database.

Similarly we can try to find how many of them how many students in class 7 are in certain lass for example, the number can found with this formula:

Similarly we can find the number of students that are male and are in class 7 using the following formula:

=COUNTIFS(F2:F41,”M”,G2:G41,7)

..the answer is 8 – i.e. that is there are 8 male students in class 7.

Going one step further we can find the number of students that are male and are student of class 7 and 8 using the following formula:

=COUNTIFS(F2:F41,”M”,G2:G41,7)+COUNTIFS(F2:F41,”M”,G2:G41,8)

Note that in order to get an effect logical operator and, we need to add further COUNTIFS() and multiple criteria’s within COUNTIF() are of no use.

Another question that can be answered is the number of students born in a specific year – this can be calculated by using the date range in the COUNTIF() criteria:

=COUNTIFS(E2:E41,”>=1/1/1995″,E2:E41,”<=12/31/1995″)

To find the number of students born in a month, for example to find the number of Virgo (‎August 23 — September 22) could be a tricky one, but we can do it with the use of a helper column.

Another example of data-set:

The following database named Popular Kid has been adopted from this source [Link]. The database surveyed 400+ students of various grades and school, and localities to found what they will choose to be at school from the following: making good grades, being good at sports or being popular at school. The factors were ranked from 1 to 4, one being most important and 4 being least important.

Let’s see how can we use COUNTIFS() to answer questions related to this survey

What was the response of grade 5 students about being good at grades in school?

The question asks us to find the response of grade 1 and being good at studies so we have two criteria fields – Grade in Column B and Grades in Column H. Since 1 represents least important and 4 being most important, we will use the following formula to answer the question:

=COUNTIFS($B2:$B479,5,H2:H479,1)

The answer is 39. So 39 students from grade 5 said that most important thing to them at school is to be good at grades. But this figure is not really meaning full if we don’t know what percent of student was 39. So we will improve our answer converting it to percentage.

Thus 12% of the student said grades are the most important thing to them.

Another important question could be this:

At what age the students started to consider good grades as the most important goal in their school lives.

The question can be answered by finding out the responses for all the age groups and for the case where student answered studies to be the most important goal. The following table will be produced when we use COUNTIF():

We can see that at the age of 11 years, most student found study to be their main goal.

Another interesting insight can be found if we examine the difference between the goals of the Rural and the suburban students by using COUNTIF. The following table will be produced.

The section of table that reports absolute values can be misleading, therefore we will discuss the table in terms of percentage – the right section. We can see that biggest section of suburban students prefer studies over any other goal (57%) whereas students from rural area find “Popularity” as the most appealing goal. It is interesting to note that none of the student is interested in “Looks”.

Conclusion:

There are numerous ways we can use COUNTIFS() as we see in second example we can get meaningful insight by correct usage of function. Please down load the file from this link and see how the examples actually work.

The post Getting Most out of COUNTIF () function appeared first on Excel Zoom.

A project is a onetime activity that can span over varying length of time. A project could be an activity that can finish in a day or it could cover months and years. Project management is the process of managing this activity. As the complexity of the project increases, it becomes more and more difficult to manage it, hence require more and more skilled people. However, whatever be the project and however is handling it, one tool is always there to help them – that is called Gantt chart or simply the project timeline.

In this post, we will discuss methods that can be used to have a project time line in Excel. The question might be asked why to use excel when there are specialized software available for project time lines. The answer is simple, the cost of such software some time way more than one can afforded for minor projects. Or even if the software and less expensive, it might have a steep learning curve. Hence people revert to the use of MS Excel for project management.

How does a project time line look?

Most of the project time lines or Gantt charts have activities on the right hand side and the date line on the top of the table. This makes it easier to list down all the activities one by one. Using, the activities are sub divided into smaller activities and still smaller activities – this is called the Work breakdown Structure of a project.

The Gantt chart uses indentation to mark sub activities. Sometimes number separated by a decimal place is used to show the hierarchy. The activities column is followed by two more columns that describe start and the end date of the activity. Here is a sample of how does a Gantt chart look like.

Creating your own project time line:

Various website offer ready to use templates for project time line, but we can also create our own as per our personal requirements. In the following lines, we will understand how to create the above project line.

Step 1 – Work Breakdown Structure

Make sure you have one! Without WBS, it is difficult to plan a Gantt chart, if not available, you can create some dummy activities just to fill the space. It will make it easier to understand the flow of the process. You can use either indentation for creating hierarchy of activities or use consecutive column to put in different activities.

In our case, we have used different column to put in the sub activities.

Step – 2 Have a Stand and End Date Column

The start and the end date describes the start and end date for all the levels of the activity. The start and end date for main activity should encompass all sub activities and tasks. There two possibilities to create end date and start date in Gantt chart:

1. Put start and end date manually.
2. Put start date and enter number of days required for that activity to complete. The end date can be obtained by adding the number of such day.

End Date = Start Date + Days Required To Finish the Job

In our case, we have entered the values manually.

Step – 3 Creating Header Row with Dates:

This is amongst the most important part of creating a project time line, because without dates, it will not give us our desired result. We start with a date and then keeping adding one to it so that it progresses automatically.

Thus in G2, we put the first date manually, and from it onward to the right, the date is calculated by adding one to the proceeding one. G3 becomes G2+1, G4 = G3+1 and so on.

Step – 4 Showing the activity with shaded area.

One done with these three steps, the next and the most critical step is show the activity progress by shading some cells. For smaller projects with less frequent steps, we can do this task manually. But in case you want your activities progress to be date dependent then will require some excel understanding.

In order to make progress date dependent, we will make use of conditional formatting menu.

We use and IF() function with AND() to get our desired result. The formula works by evaluating the AND() function. This function checks if the date in the header row lies in date bracket of start and end date. If it lies, the formula will return 1 and else will give 0.

For example taking up the first cell, in G3, the formula is evaluated in the following manner.

=IF(AND(G$2>=$E3,G$2<=$F3),1,””)

The first part to be evaluated in G$2>=$E3, G2 is in the header column,  this compared the time line value in cell G2 with start date in E3, we have fixed row referencing style for G2 and fixed column refereeing style for E3, as we will be dragging the formula, rightwards and downwards.

The second part of the formula G$2<=$F3 will compare if the time line value is less than the end date. If yes then AND() will return a TRUE, the formula only works when we have both TRUE. The result will be a table with 1 and 0.

You can see he progress in form of arrays of 1 in rows.

Step – 5 Applying Conditional Formatting

Now we will use these 1s and 0s for conditionally formatting cells.

1. Select the entire range from G3:AK13.
2. Go to Conditional Formatting Dialogue Box and select Rule Manager.
3. From there select New Rule. This will make a new rule.
4. Using New Rule, select the last options from dialogue box that sets criteria for cells to be formatted based on cell value.
5. Select formatting from same dialogue box – select a color to fill and the same color for font in the cells.
6. Remove fixed cell referencing from the formula section.

7. The formula should be =G3=1 that means that when applied it will have all the cells that are equal to 1.
8. Press Ok to exist the dialogue box, press on one again and press Apply to apply the formatting.

Once done the final output should look like.

Conclusion:

You can see that cell, with value 1 are only filled with color creating the project time line effect. The entire cell there had zero are now blank. In this ways we can create the project timeline in excel. Please download this file to see how things works and create your own time line

The post Creating Project Timeline or Gantt Chart with MS Excel appeared first on Excel Zoom.

We use programming language to build applications that we use in our work and domestic lives. This is true for almost every computer application that we use. There are numerous languages out there, that are at the disposal of the programmers that use them for various purposes. The language that is used to add more functionality to MS Office, or is used as a default programming language for MS Office is called Visual Basic for Application or simply VBA.

Excel being part of the MS Office suite uses the same programming language and we often found functions and macros written in this language in our excel worksheets. Such written functions are called User Defined Functions, similarly code written to automate the task in Excel are called Macros.

In today’s tutorial we will explore what is VBA, its different features, a brief introduction to VBA programming and more.

Accessing the VBA Window in MS Excel:

As we move on to use Excel VBA, the first thing is see where we have this programming option in Excel. The easiest way of accessing the code editor window in excel is to press Alt+F11 while you are using an Excel worksheet. Alternatively see How to Open Excel VBA Editor 

This is the window where we will put all the macros and the functions.

Classification of codes used in MS Excel VBA:

The code we write in VBA can be classified in either of the following three categories:

User Defined Function:

Excel has numerous functions that can be used as we need them. Out of these functions, we came across the situation where neither of them fits in or the formula based solution is too complicated to use, we revert to this option.

We revert to writing function that fulfill a situational or a a very specific need. For example consider following set of code that is written to find the if value is less then zero, is zero or more then it:

Function FindSign(number)
Select Case number
Case Is < 0
FindSign = “-ive”
Case 0
FindSign = “Zero”
Case Is > 0
FindSign = “+ive”
End Select
End Function

Note that the function always start with “Func” that is used to show its a function. In the above example of function, we have used a special command called “Case” to find if a number is less then zero (or negative), equal to zero or is positive (greater then zero). This is just a start-up example of function that can be easily written with IF() statements, but, we can produce really complicated functions as well.

In order for these functions to work, we need to place them in “Modules”. A module can be placed or inserted in a worksheet when we have VBA windows enabled. One need to go to Insert > Module and click to insert the module. Once inserted we will select it and place the function code there.

Once we have done this, we will be able to access the function from functions window.

Thus a user can write any thing he wants to be used a User Defined Function.

The Macros:

Macros also belong to the VBA family and are used to automate the task that are frequently done by a user. Thus they are used to speed up the work and reduce burden on end users. An example of already incorporated macros in MS Office is the option to save file after certain time period. Thus certainly reduced the burden on user and also reduces the chances of loosing data if file is not saved.

Besides this, there are numerous situations where VBA is a must required. Consider following example of vba that will highlight all cells that contains formulas in the range:

Sub CellWithFormulas()
Dim Dataset As Range
Set Dataset = Selection
Dataset.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeFormulas).Interior.Color = vbRed
End Sub

The macros is placed in the same module where we have placed the function. When we execute this macro from the developer’s tab, we have following result:

In this example, cell B3 and B7 contains the formulas.

Event Procedures:

As is indicated by the name, these are the codes that are meant to be used when something or some event happens. The example of an event could be the opening of a workbook, inserting a number in a cell, clicking some cell and many more.

Events Procedures are useful as they are active behind the scene are run as something happens. A very useful example of even procedure is one that is used to highlight the row and column as active cell changes. This makes reading and tracking the data very easy.

Private Sub ActiveCellHighlight(ByVal Target As Range)
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
Cells.Interior.ColorIndex = 0 
Target.Interior.ColorIndex = 6
Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

The result is a highlighted active cell.

Debugging your code?

The code that a user writes is not always correct and contains errors. In this case we need a debugging mechanism to find the mistake that we have done. For such situation, VBA editors provides us with a handy tool called “Immediate Window”.

This window can be accessed by using key Ctrl + G when VBA editor is active. This window can be used to execute a line of code, to get the information related to the worksheets, set values to the variables and run macros.

For example in the following screen shot, the initial value of the active cell with yellow fill was 10, as we have found by command ?activecell.value. The value is then re-assigned by using the assignment operator and the offset command.

The offset command lets the value to be on the left side of the cells at difference of 2 columns (hence the negative sign: -2). and when we reprint the value of active cell, it is 5.

In the same way, this can be used to run macros, testing small snipts of vba and much more.

Conclusion:

VBA is a very handy tool for excel users and gives them a lot of control over their worksheets. The use of VBA makes worksheets look more professional and more interactive. Please download the attached file for example and the vba code.

The post Introduction to VBA for MS Excel appeared first on Excel Zoom.

“Comments” or “Annotations” add a lot of value to data.  They are frequently added by programmers to their codes to make them more understandable.  Adding appropriate comments to a program or document is a good practice because a programmer or writer might forget, over time, the purpose of the code.  For someone who was not part of the project it could be really difficult to grasp the theme of the code (or document).

The same rule is applicable to the reports we create in MS Excel.  For longer and more complicated sheets, we regularly add comments to cells to provide further context.

In this tutorial we will see how we can annotate a pivot table.  You can download the companion worksheet from this link.

Adding Comments to a Cell:

Adding comments to a cell is simple. Select the cell and simply:

1. Press Shift+F2, this will insert a comment to a cell.
2. Use Key Tips feature – you can press Alt+R+C to a comment to a cell.
3. Or alternatively you can point your cursor to Review Tab and select add a comment.

Comments are shown in excel by a small red triangle (flag) on the top right side of a cell.  For convenience, excel has the option to show or hide all the comments that is accessible through Review>Show All Comments or Hide All Comments.

Adding Comments inside a Pivot Table:

Consider the list of data as shown in following picture.  It has four fields (heading): Subdivision, Group Segment, Revenue and the Expenses.  We will create a pivot table from this to analyse the data.

The resulting pivot table has the following layout.  The pivot table clearly explains how the data is distributed for various subdivision, group segments and their respective expenses and revenues.

Lets take up an example – we want to add a comment to Subdivision: Bigger and Revenue Value of 99335.46.  We can do it by simply pressing Shift+F2 – a way we used to comment on a normal, non-pivot table cell.  Following in this manner we can add additional comments inside of cells.

In order to view or hide all or some of the comments, we can use Show or Hide All Comments:

Till this point everything is OK – we have our comments placed inside the correct cell.  The problem starts when we try to filter the pivot for some criteria for analysis.

Managing comments with a changing pivot table:

As we change the criteria from the Pivot Filter – the following situation occurs:

Let’s make use of the filter in the pivot table.  The pivot table is updated for the selection segment “Big.”  As the entire table is updated, we are faced with the problem we have already pointed out in this article.  It is clear that the comment that we added to a different cell is still there – we meant this comment for revenue for ”bigger” subdivision but this is now showing against “More than 500.”  This shows us the obvious limitation of comments placed inside of pivot tables.

The WorkAround # 1:

The workaround in this case is to add a column in the original pivot table with comments.  In the following screen shot we can see the fifth field added to our data that contains the comments.  The final list looks like the below one:

When we create a pivot table, we will not be able to see these comments but they are visible when we double click on any value in the pivot table, as double clicking the value will open that specific entry in to a new worksheet.  When you double click the following entries are displayed (clicking 99335.46168)

You can see that the comments are visible against each entry.

WorkAround # 2:

The second workaround is yet another trick.  As we know that pivot tables are really good at summarizing data, we will create a pivot that has all the information it can hold.  There is a limitation when it comes to large pivot tables – but it should be remember that for large pivots, we often do not use all of the fields available to use, but just few of them to create scenarios.

So in this case we have four fields only.  That can be arranged by removing Group Segment from Report filter and bringing it to Row Labels (above subdivision).  This gives us the following pivot table.

With this, we have eliminated the need for a filter and hence the event where comments are mis-located.  We have all the required information in just one pivot table – feel free to comment over it.

Additional Annotation:

The above table is not symmetrical.  By symmetrical we mean that there are no values of Revenues and Expenses for the Group Segment Big, Subdivision Bigger and Very Small or Pretty Small.  Similarly no such entries for More than 500 and Pretty Small for Medium segment group.  That is making this table unsymmetrical.

In order to improve its looks and make it more professional, we can add some dummy entries to the original data like below:

The above arrangement will result in the following Pivot table update:

As we can see that most of the options are availed and we have also listed for all the options we could have needed, we can now easily comment on this pivot table with conventional comments.

Conclusion:

Though the options for annotations are limited, there are workarounds.  We have seen two of these workarounds by adding a comment column to the original worksheet and the second one by adding all desirable variables such that there is no need for filtering the pivot  – this might not be the ideal solution it works, nevertheless.

Please download the file from this link to see a live version of the above examples.

The post How to Annotate an Excel Pivot Table appeared first on Excel Zoom.

One can, surprisingly enough, use excel for conducting a forensic audit.  Before jumping to that discussion, lets start with an introduction of auditing procedures.  There are two types of procedures that attempt to minimize fraud in financial transactions – one called Statutory Procedure and one utilizing Forensic Techniques.

The first technique is primarily concerned with following procedure and rules, making sure that documentary evidences are present, regulations are followed and so on.  Forensic technique relies on the micro approach, questioning the authenticity of the documents and transactions and focusing on gathering evidence of any possible fraud.

As the later techniques relies on collection of data and its analysis to find a clue, we can use excel to support performance of such technique.

We will look at five examples to see how Excel can help up speed up these tasks:

Identifying Duplicate Transactions using Highlight Values:

Consider the following instance where we have a supplier name or code, supplier invoice number and the amount. There is a chance that one might have a duplicate amount number or duplicate invoice number for different suppliers – but what if a pair of records have exactly the same data for all the three parameters?  This is a definite case of duplicate invoices existing:

In the above example we have produced the column D by concatenating the data in the first three columns and then applying the conditional formatting for duplicate values.  (The exact formula is =A2&B2&C2 in cell D2 and then dragged down, the conditional formatting on cell D2:D13 can be applied by accessing Highlight Values Menu from Home Tab.)

As you can see from this screenshot, various duplicates are highlighted in the second and the third column as well as the fourth column.  We can ignore the duplicates in the second and third column as invoice number and amount could be the same for different suppliers – but the duplicate value in the fourth column means that all the three parameters are the same.  This points to a definite duplicate entry that should be checked.

Analyzing Round Numbered Transactions:

If a forensic accountant is getting too many round numbers, it is time to check the accuracy of the document or ask for further support.  Too many round numbers may indicate something fraudulent is occurring.

Excel has a built in function called MOD () to analyze if a number is a round number or not.  The dynamics of the formula are simple – we add the following formula in the example sheet to find if the number has to be checked for something potentially fraudulent:

=IF(MOD(A2,100)=0,”Check”,”-“)

The formula will return a non-zero number and the result can be presented as-is or nested into an IF() statement to give the desired result:

Above Average Payments to Vendors or Checking the Ratio between a Maximum and Minimum:

For a product, prices usually fall within historical ranges.  If anything goes beyond the average, the entry can be question and should be verified.  Consider data in the following table that has price listed for two different products.  These products are bought over a period of six months and their prices vary between a minimum of 11.01 and a maximum of 14, whereas the ratio of the max/min is 1.272.  Compared to this, if we look at the second product, we find this ratio to be 2.9 times or almost 3 times.  This points to a discrepancy.

Gap Detection:

This is a test that uses a simple fact that any missing invoice (number) in the sales database can indicate a potential problem.  This test can be done for such a document and help drive for further inquiry of the preparer.

In excel we can do this test by first sorting the invoice number and then taking the difference of consecutive invoices.  The following screenshot how the excel sheet is setup for this case:

In the above example, we have setup a formula that calculate the difference between the two consecutive invoice numbers, if it is one, then its okay and we move forward.  If not, it means that an invoice number was skipped – we can then write a conditional formula with IF() that can give us a custom message like this:

=IF(A3-A2<>1,A3-A2-1&” – Invoice(s) Missing”,”-“)

The above formula checks if the difference is one, if not, we have a custom message that “n-invoices are missing”.  Otherwise, we will have a blank cell.

Checking Ratio of the Highest to the Second Highest Number:

This is again a procedure that relies on the use of finding maximum, but not just maximum but also the second largest number in the data.

Consider the following data for a part purchased from a supplier:

We can use build in function MAX() and LARGE() to find the maximum and the second largest value in the data.  As we take the ratio of the data, we find it to be 10 times the maximum number. This means that maximum for the data is much larger than the usual average value.

Conclusion:

We cannot eliminate mistakes or “fudging” in the financial data however we can positively try to minimize it.  We have seen five techniques that can be applied using a standard tool like MS Excel for tracing such issues.  Please download the attached file to see it working practically.

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