Excel Tips And Tricks

Using spreadsheets is a core skill for financial advisors in communicating with clients and planning their personal financial situations.  The learning objective of this class is to teach financial advisors tips for using MIcrosoft Excel more effectively. The class includes some intermediate and advanced tasks as well as basic skills. It provides an introduction and overview of an in-depth course for practitioners. 

Instructor Jim Cline, who has trained thousands of CPAs, financial executives, and other business professionals in Excel, shares a project to show commonly used TEXT functions, including how to:

• break apart a list of names to place them in a last name, first name format
• restore them to their original format first name last name format
• clean up errors in data
• avoid overwriting your original data set

Recognize the proper use of TEXT functions, including:
• LEFT()
• MID()
• FIND()
• TRIM()
• PROPER()

Identify the steps to nest formulas and functions within formulas

Recognize the proper use of LOGICAL and LOOKUP functions, including:
• IF()
• VLOOKUP()
• LOOKUP()
• SUMIF()

Find the Excel Options dialog box to display the DEVELOPER tab

Choose and format the SPIN form control

In a second project, sales bonuses are calculated to illustrate different ways to organize information logically and efficiently. In addition, attendees are shown how to make their spreadsheets easier for colleagues to use.

James (Jim) Cline graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting and Taxation from the University of Houston in 1989.  His first job was at Arthur Andersen, where he worked in the Tax and Real Estate Appraisal departments for seven years. In 1996, Mr. Cline became Manager of Revenue Services at Service Corporation International (SCI), the largest funeral home and cemetery consolidator in North America, where he is now Director of Ad Hoc Reporting and Information Support. In 2005, Mr. Cline found that recent college graduates lacked the Excel skills needed to work in his group at SCI, so he developed a 40-hour self-study CPA CPE course. His first book (Excel 2003) took three-and-a-half years to complete.  He expanded his curriculum to include Microsoft Access, which took an additional two years.

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This webinar is only eligible for 1.5 CFP® CE, 1.5 PACE credits toward the CLU® and ChFC® designations, and 1.5 live CPA CPE credits.