Excel Accountant: What-If Analysis

Learning Objectives

• To identify when to use Excel’s Goal Seek feature versus Solver.
• To describe how to apply Excel’s Solver Add-in for more complex what-if analyses.
• To recall how to use the Data Table feature in Excel to compare calculation results based on varying inputs.

Course Description

This informative online Excel CPE course presented by David is designed to teach you how to implement Excel’s powerful What-If Analysis tools. David explains how and when to make use of Excel’s Scenario Manager, how to use the Data Table feature to compare calculation results based on two or three inputs, how to use Excel’s Goal Seek feature to perform basic what-if analyses, and more.

 Excel expert David Ringstrom, CPA, demonstrates every technique at least twice in this online continuing education course: first, on a PowerPoint slide with numbered steps, and second, in the subscription-based 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.

Office 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.

This online Excel CPE webinar covers the following key topics:

• Enhancing the Summary Report generated by the Scenario Manager with range names.
• Using the Summary Report aspect of Scenario Manager to compare different scenarios side by side.
• Implementing a simple Excel macro that will empower you to apply multiple scenarios at once when you have more than 32 inputs.
• Exploring the Forecast Sheet feature in Excel 2016, which can extrapolate trends based on existing data in your spreadsheets.
• Enabling Excel’s Solver Add-in for more complex what-if analyses.
• Pausing Goal Seek when necessary to check the status of calculations that involve large numbers.
• Contrasting Excel’s Data Table feature with traditional approaches used in spreadsheets.
• Avoiding the need to write repetitive formulas with Excel’s Data Table feature.
• Utilizing the PMT worksheet function to calculate loan payment amounts.

Overview

• Excel's What-If Analysis Features

  2 mins
• PMT Function

  5 mins
• Scenario Manager Feature

  11 mins
• Scenario Summary Pivot Table

  29 mins
• Merging Scenarios

  33 mins
• Goal Seek Feature

  58 mins
• Data Table Overview

  67 mins
• Forecast Feature (Excel 2016+)

  90 mins