Tag: microsoft excel training

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We Don’t Lock Our Microsoft Excel Course Content

You Can Use the Calculation Fields in our Excel Exercises as Often as You Like!

learn Excel online training course unlocked calculations and formulas
We keep all the calculation fields in our Excel course exercises unlocked so you can play around with different figures of your own as often as you like.

DESPITE THE POPULARITY OF cloud-based accounting software applications like Xero and MYOB, Excel still remains one of the most indispensable software programs for businesses and individuals alike. That is why we always make it a priority to constantly update our Microsoft Excel Training Course.

You can apply Excel to so much

Accounting software, even robust packages like MYOB, only allow you to perform a finite number of functions that relate to business accounting. However, Excel can be used for a multitude of different purposes — both business and personal, merely one of which is to develop a financial forecast for an investment.

EzyLearn courses provide real-life case studies

learn excel online training course

Our Intermediate Excel Training Course uses the construction of a granny flat for investment purposes as a case study example. We chose a granny flat for the case study because most people construct them as an investment, whether they’re in business or not, so it’s a good real-world example.

It also deals with depreciation, which you can claim in your tax, regardless of whether you’re in business or not.

Our calculation fields remain “unlocked”

But even though, with the current property booms in our major cities, granny flat construction has become more common, it is not so common that every person taking our Excel courses is planning to build a granny flat for their next investment. That’s why we decided not to lock our course content.

What does this mean? It means that all the calculation fields in the exercise files of our Excel training courses are unlocked, so that your education remains unlocked too. You’re free to play around and replicate them as you need, so you can get a proper handle of how to use Excel in business or for work.

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Visit our website for more information on our Microsoft Excel Training Course, with its new granny flats case study. We provide a range of online Excel training courses for beginners’, intermediate and advanced students.

Online bookkeeping accounting training courses for CPD points

EzyLearn Excel, MYOB and Xero online training courses count towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for bookkeepers and accountants. We’ve been an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers ever since the organisation started in Australia. Find out how CPD points can be of benefit to you.

 

 

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What Happens if You Have Backlog of PAYG and Super Payments?

Don’t get lumped with penalties when you don’t need to!

failure to lodge penalties how to manage payroll in Excel online training course
It’s not only frustrating and disheartening, but a waste of business funds to be penalised for lodging your financials too late.

A LOT OF SMALL BUSINESSES have trouble managing their payroll, especially when they only have a few employees and paying to access a payroll system in their accounting package is an unnecessary expense. You’ll learn how to use Excel to manage your PAYG and super contributions in our Intermediate Microsoft Excel Training Courses. However, sometimes you may have a backlog of PAYG and super payments. Let’s take a look at how to manage these.

Rescue bookkeeping

A backlog of PAYG and super payments that date back more than three months is known as rescue bookkeeping, although it can often include other bookkeeping issues, like bank accounts that don’t reconcile with statements.

PAYG payments

For businesses that only withhold up to $25,000 each year, you’re supposed to make PAYG payments and file a withholding report each quarter. You have 28 days from the end of the quarter to do so, after which time, you may incur a Failure To Lodge (FTL) penalty.

Superannuation payments

As with PAYG payments and reporting, you can also incur a FTL penalty for not lodging or paying your employees’ superannuation contributions in time. All businesses, regardless of size, have to make superannuation payments each quarter — the ATO sets out the due dates for each period on their website.

Lodging late PAYG and super payments

The ATO only applies penalties for failure to lodge reports or make payments for each period of 28 days (or part thereof) that a document or payment is overdue. Each period incurs one penalty unit for each document, up to a maximum of five penalty units.

From 2015 onwards, the value of a penalty unit is $180 (previously it was $170) for small businesses, which are defined as entities with an assessable income or GST turnover of no more than $1 million a year.

The maximum penalty a small business will pay is $900 for each document or payment that is overdue. Note too that FTL penalties will also incur a general interest charge (GIC), applied on top of the penalty.

Managing late PAYG and super payments

Use the Ad Hoc Payroll Guide, a new case study that is included in our Intermediate Microsoft Excel Training Courses to determine the rate of PAYG tax to withhold and the required super contribution amounts in Excel. Once you’ve worked out the required amounts (visit the ATO website for tax tables prior to 2017), lodge the necessary PAYG payments and reports to the ATO; pay super contributions using the SuperStream super clearing house.

The ATO will write to you if you are required to pay a penalty — sometimes they are waived for first-time offences, or if the amounts are small.

Our courses now include real-life case studies

learn excel online training course

Our Intermediate Microsoft Excel training courses will also teach you how to create a payroll spreadsheet from scratch to suit your own business, so you can easily work out your PAYG and super obligations. Visit our website for more information on all of our Excel training courses.

learn PowerPoint online training course

Create brilliant presentations and graphics for all kinds of business purposes.

Gone are the days of excruciatingly dull PowerPoint slide presentations. Nowadays PowerPoint is the hidden gem used to generate animations, videos, movies, advertising and graphics. It’s a great ally to the marketer or social media person in your organisation.

This creative program can also be used to conjure up the most beautiful and modern pictorial slides to enhance any presentation or induction. Find out more about our 2016 version PowerPoint courses.

online bookkeeping courses to earn cpd pointsEzyLearn Excel, MYOB and Xero online training courses count towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for bookkeepers and accountants. We’ve been an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers ever since the organisation started in Australia. Find out how CPD points can be of benefit to you.

 

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Excel Can Prove that Granny Flats Don’t Always Add Value

Using Excel to Financially Forecast the Viability of Your Investment

financial forecasts excel online training course
Excel is the tool you need for developing a feasibility study so you can assess the viability of any kind of investment.

When you are planning to invest in a project, you naturally have to weigh up the risks. One of the chief ways of doing this is to complete a financial forecast to determine the viability of your investment. One type of investment that has been exceedingly common and popular with the current property boom has been the investment in a granny flat.

Many homeowners and investors who own a property with adequate room and the right conditions, have chosen to build a granny flat on their existing property as a means of earning extra income.

In our Microsoft Excel Intermediate Training Course, we feature a brand new case study, using a granny flat as a way of demonstrating how you determine the viability of an investment.

Granny flats earn income, not add value

Of course, you need to consider whether you’re legally allowed to rent out a granny flat, which in some Australian states — Victoria, South Australia and Queensland — you aren’t. If you’re found renting a granny flat in any of those states, your local council can ask you to remove the granny flat from your property.

You may determine that a granny flat will earn around $12,000 a year in rental income, but it could take up to 10 years to break even on construction costs. Although some of those costs can be deducted as expenses and the dwelling depreciated over time, depending on where the property is located, property values may not increase by that much. This is amplified if you’ve just purchased the property, compared to a person who’s owned their property for 5 or 10 years.

Granny flats can reduce your rental return

Depending on how the granny flat has been constructed, its proximity to the main dwelling, and whether there are any shared or common areas, there’s also the potential to reduce the rental income on the principal dwelling. If the property has been previously tenanted, the shift from single to dual occupancy will reduce the rent of the principal dwelling. This could be offset by the existence of the granny flat, however, it moves the goalposts for your break even date. You may also experience more tenant churn, which will see more of your rental income going to real estate agents in letting fees, and greater wear and tear on the dwellings. You may also experience longer than average vacancy rates.

How to develop a financial forecast that can be used to determine the viability of a granny flat as an investment is covered in our Microsoft Excel Training Course, with its new Investing in a Granny Flat Case Study. Visit our website for more information on our full suite of online training courses. And don’t forget — EzyLearn online training courses can be counted towards your Continuing Professional Development Points! 

learn excel online training courseAt EzyLearn we are constantly refreshing the content of our online training courses. Where possible, we draw on real-life case studies as examples, to help you learn, and apply your skills, in a relevant way that makes sense. Visit our Micro Courses page to learn more.

 

 

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Linking a Financial Forecast with Xero and Excel

Excel Will Help You Work Out the HOW of Depreciation

learn excel online training courseWe recently updated our advanced Microsoft Excel Training Course content. It now contains a case study, by way of an extra exercise workbook, using a granny flat building project to create a financial forecast.

We chose a granny flat building project for our case study because it’s an investment decision quite a lot of people with or without a business have made. It’s also a capital asset that can be depreciated over time. Therefore it has the potential to affect your taxes in lots of different ways.

Our Excel Training Course, with its granny flat financial-forecast case study, will teach you how to use Excel to create a financial forecast, which you can then replicate for your own investment — whatever that may be.

Your bookkeeper uses Excel to calculate depreciation

When you build a new structure, such as a granny flat, which you intend to rent out or use for businesses purposes — i.e., it’s an investment and not for your own personal use — the building can be depreciated along with some of the fittings and finishes (floorings, curtains, paint, etc). That’s despite the value of the land upon which the granny flat is constructed increasing in value over time.

Once you’ve set up your financial forecasting file in Excel using the correct formulas that will update as the investment progresses, you’ll be able to track all of the future costs, income and depreciation in that spreadsheet.

Input depreciation into Xero

Excel will calculate the depreciation amounts for you, which you should then enter into Xero. We cover how to deal with depreciation in our Xero Bank Reconciliation Course, because lots of businesses own, or will own, a capital asset at some point.

However, this doesn’t tell you how to determine the depreciation amounts, which most business owners have to get their bookkeeper to work out for them. Most bookkeepers work this out in Excel based on the depreciation rates provided by the ATO. However, if you have already created a financial forecast in Excel, you won’t need to get your bookkeeper to do this for you.

Individuals can claim depreciation too

Even if you’re not a business owner, but you’ve still built a granny flat that you intend to rent out, you can claim depreciation in your tax returns. Instead of entering the depreciation into Xero, you’d include it on your annual tax return, so it’s really important that you work this out in Excel first and regularly update it.

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Once you know how to use Excel for financial forecasting, you can use the same formulas and modelling for any financial forecast — be it for a granny flat project, business investment, anything that requires you to make a financial decision. Visit our website for more information on our advanced Microsoft Excel Training Course, with its new granny flats case study.

Do you want to brush up your Xero skills? Or perhaps you use MYOB but want to get a handle on Xero? Check out our suite of Xero training courses — all available for one low price. 

Online bookkeeping accounting training courses for CPD points

EzyLearn Excel, MYOB and Xero online training courses count towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for bookkeepers and accountants. We’ve been an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers ever since the organisation started in Australia. Find out how CPD points can be of benefit to you.

 

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Which Granny Flat is a Better Investment?

A Real-Life Granny Flat Construction Scenario

learn excel online training courseChoosing between a one-bedroom and two-bedroom granny flat is a decision you’ll need to make early on in the project, and it’s largely a financial one.

EzyLearn’s Microsoft Excel Training Course includes a new case study, “Investing in a Granny Flat”, which uses the construction of a granny flat as a real life example to help you to better understand how to develop a financial forecast for an investment.

Determine construction and ancillary costs

How much it will cost to construct both a one-bedroom and two-bedroom granny flat is the first step. You need to work out how much it will cost to get each granny flat constructed to the point that someone can move in, as well as any ancillary costs, like council fees and levies, real estate management fees interest rates and so forth.

Determine rental income

Some granny flat companies will give you rental income estimates, but you’re encouraged to investigate this yourself. Rental incomes are heavily dependent on your local area and the demand for that type of property. In Sydney, the demand for rental property far outweighs the demand in regional NSW. Take into consideration vacancy rates in the area and the types of property that are in demand. Areas with high vacancy rates and low demand for one-bedroom units could indicate there’s little demand for a permanently rented one-bedroom granny flat, which will put the rent down.

Determine depreciation amounts

Both granny flats will be subject to the same depreciation rate, however the amounts will differ due to the differing value of each dwelling. In addition to an annual depreciation rate on the dwelling, consider other elements of the granny flat that will also be subject to depreciation. Floor coverings, for example, can be depreciated over time. Carpeting is typically depreciated at a rate of 20 percent, where tiles are depreciated at 2.5 percent because the latter has a longer lifespan.

Determine the best investment

Add all of these costs into Excel to determine the average annual rental yield, expressed as a percentage of the property value. Rental yields are used to show the return on an investment. The higher the rental yield, the better the return is. Taken in combination with your own personal circumstances and plans for the future should help you to determine which option represents the better investment.

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Our Microsoft Excel training courses, featuring the new granny flat case study, go into much greater detail. Or view our full suite of training courses. 

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learn excel online training course

At EzyLearn, we’re committed to helping students of all our courses find better employment opportunities, become their own boss and upskill. To this end, we constantly update our courses with new, highly relevant content — it’s why we provide you with the option of Lifetime access you can always refer back to our courses as you progress in your skills’ development. 

We’re thrilled to announce our new Micro Courses which are be added to our existing courses, or can be purchased alone. These are based on real-life case studies and relate to real people in genuine, real-life scenarios. Subscribe to our blog and be alerted of updates.

 

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Calculating PAYG Obligations Without a Payroll System

Third Quarter is Looming; Are You Up to Date with Payroll?

ad hoc payroll payments ExcelMost businesses using an accounting program like MYOB or Xero will use the included payroll package to manage their employees’ payroll. For businesses with only a few employees, however, the additional payroll function is an unnecessary expense.

In our recently updated Advanced Microsoft Excel training courses, we have included a micro course on ‘Ad Hoc Payroll’, featuring a detailed spreadsheet for calculating PAYG and superannuation obligations. In this instance, our micro course is a detailed spreadsheet based on a case study, so it’s relevant and applicable to real life.

PAYG and the businesses it applies to

Every Australian business with employees who are each paid more than the tax-free threshold has a legal obligation to withhold tax on their employees’ behalf. This is known as the PAYG System (or Pay As You Go), where amounts of tax are withheld from each employee’s wage payments.

Businesses that withhold up to $25,000 each year only need to make payments to the ATO each quarter; businesses withholding amounts greater than $25,001 may have to make payments to the ATO each month or as regularly as each week.

At the time of writing, the tax-free threshold is currently $18,200, which is equivalent to:

  • $350 a week
  • $700 a fortnight
  • $1,517 a month

Superannuation contributions

Again, any business that pays its employees more than $450 each month must also make regular superannuation contributions on their employees’ behalf. We’ve written in the past about the government’s clearing house called SuperStream, which allows you to easily make super contributions — for free.

But first, you need to work out how much super you need to contribute for your employees. The superannuation guarantee is currently 9.5 percent of your employees’ gross wages, which is payable on top of their wages — not deducted out of.

Using tax tables to calculate wages

Each year, the ATO produces a range of tax tables to help you work out how much to withhold from payments you make to your employees. In our Ad Hoc Payroll Micro Course, we’ve already added the most current tax tables to the accompanying payroll spreadsheet, as well as the superannuation guarantee tables.

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We feature a number of real-life case studies, which we have turned into micro courses. You can use the Ad Hoc Payroll Micro Course to determine the rate of PAYG tax to withhold and the required super contribution amounts in Excel, rather than paying to access the payroll functions of MYOB or Xero. Our Intermediate Microsoft Excel training courses will also teach you how to create a payroll spreadsheet from scratch to suit your own business. Visit our website for more information on all of our Excel training courses.

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online bookkeeping courses to earn cpd points

 

EzyLearn Excel, MYOB and Xero online training courses count towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for bookkeepers and accountants. We’ve been an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers ever since the organisation started in Australia. Find out how CPD points can be of benefit to you.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Wonders of Microsoft Excel’s 3D Formulas

Excel’s 3D Formulas Work Across Worksheets

Excel formulas online training courseWe’ve recently updated our Microsoft Excel Training Course content, because it remains one of the most indispensable tools for small businesses — and we’ve included a new exercise workbook which takes you through all the steps involved in developing a financial forecast for an investment.

We used a granny flat project as the case study in our financial forecasting workbook, but the beauty of Excel is that, once you get the formulas right, they can be replicated for any kind of investment, not just one for building a granny flat.

The wonderful 3D formula

3D formulas are one of the other many wonders of Excel. A 3D formula is basically a reference to the same cell or a range of cells within multiple Excel sheets. They’re a convenient way to reference several worksheets that follow the same pattern, with cells that contain the same type of data.

All functions work with 3D formulas

3D formulas can be used with all Excel functions — SUM, AVERAGE, PRODUCT, etc — which means that, using a 3D formula, you can easily create a financial forecasting sheet for any stage of an investment, and easily reference that data in another financial forecasting sheet. This is invaluable because there are very few projects or investments that can be contained in just one Excel worksheet.

A project like the granny flat case study in our online Excel Training Course, contains many moving parts — there’s the initial construction, then there’s the ongoing maintenance, and the rental income to manage. It would be impractical to keep all of this information contained within the one Excel worksheet.

3D formulas can be modified with time

The best part about using 3D formulas is that you only need to specify the start and end sheets (which for ease-of-use, you could just label ‘start’ and ‘end’) and the formula will reference all the worksheets between the start and end sheets, including those two sheets.

This means that, as your investment or project grows, once you’ve got the 3D formulas set up correctly, you can just add and subtract worksheets as necessary, and the calculations will update automatically.

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Once you understand how to create and work with 3D formulas, you can use them for any project or investment that you create a financial forecast for — be it for a granny flat project, business investment or anything else that requires you to make a financial decision.

Visit our website for more information on our Microsoft Excel Training Course, which covers 3D formulas.

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online bookkeeping courses to earn cpd points

EzyLearn Excel, MYOB and Xero online training courses count towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for bookkeepers and accountants. We’ve been an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers ever since the organisation started in Australia. Find out how CPD points can be of benefit to you.

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Depreciation and Tax Deductions Associated with Granny Flats

Working Out Your Depreciations with Excel

excel online training course financial forecasting
Ok, so you may or may not have the room for a granny flat, but either way, Excel is the foremost tool for forecasting financial investments.

If you have the room, building a granny flat on your property can prove to be very lucrative. EzyLearn has recently created a new Microsoft Excel exercise, using the construction of a granny flat as a case study, which forms part of our online Excel Training Course.

It was created to help students understand how to use Excel for financial forecasting, but it’s also useful to those interested in constructing a granny flat on their property.

Costs that will be depreciated

In a recent post, we mentioned claiming depreciation on the property’s existing dwelling. If the existing dwelling on your property is rather old, it may not be able to be depreciated. Depreciation rates are determined by the ATO, while an quantity surveyor will be able to determine the value of your dwelling. The cost of the new granny flat will be depreciated over time. Keep in mind that individual elements of the granny flat, such as the floorings, can also be depreciated in addition to the capital structure.

Most expenses can be deducted

The ATO has a long list of expenses relating to rental properties that can be deducted. If you visit their website, you’ll find that most expenses relating to a rental property can be claimed as a tax deduction, depending on the type of rental property. If your granny flat is intended as a long term rental, as the granny flat in our case study is, then nearly all expenses, including the demolition of the old garage and other capital works can be deducted right away.

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How you treat these expenses and depreciable assets is covered in the granny flats case study of our Microsoft Excel Training Course. Visit our website for more information on our full suite of training courses.

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EzyLearn online training courses count towards CPD points

EzyLearn Excel, MYOB and Xero online training courses count towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for bookkeepers and accountants. We’ve been an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers ever since the organisation started in Australia. Find out how CPD points can be of benefit to you.

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Use Excel to Manage ALL Your Investments

Once You Master Excel You Can Do Anything!

using excel for financial forecast granny flat2
Excel is one powerful tool. Its formulas can be extrapolated to most any accounting software program.

In our Excel training Course there’s an exercise workbook on granny flat investments, which takes you through all the steps involved in developing a financial forecast for a granny flat. It can also be used to determine the financial forecast of any investment, not just granny flats.

Even though lots of cloud-based software applications have come along in recent years — Xero and MYOB and CRMs like Zoho — which have made it possible for lots of business owners to keep track of their financials and customer sales history without ever needing to open an Excel spreadsheet, Microsoft Excel is still the software used by accountants and analysts in nearly every profession.

Excel is flexible

Microsoft Excel may be difficult to master — indeed, it’s probably one of the most difficult in the entire suite of Microsoft programs — but it’s also the most flexible. The formulas sitting behind nearly every cloud-based accounting software can all be replicated and modified in Excel, where in MYOB or Xero, they can’t.

You can’t enter the details of your granny flat project or other investment into Xero and MYOB and create a financial forecast, even though near similar formulas are being used each time you run a profit and loss statement.

Cloud software is Excel plus PLUS

Before computers and Microsoft Excel came along, accountants used a pen and paper to keep track of their clients’ business financials. And before that, before the numeral system was invented, the abacus was the main accounting tool used by merchants and traders to keep track of their finances.

You probably have no use for an abacus anymore — although in some parts of Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia people still do — because, as an accounting tool, it’s too basic. But the same cannot be said about Excel, which is capable of handling complex formulas and rendering an answer.

Export accounting data into Excel

Because cloud-accounting software is essentially a very user friendly version of an elaborate, however inflexible, spreadsheet, it means you’re able to export your accounting data into Excel. Financial analysts and accountants do this when they need to carry out further analysis on a client’s financial data, and you can too.

Once you know how to use Excel for financial forecasting, you can use the same formulas and modelling for any financial forecast — be it for a granny flat project, business investment, anything that requires you to make a financial decision.

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Visit our website for more information on our Microsoft Excel Training Course, with its new intermediate-level ‘Granny Flat Case Study’.

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online bookkeeping courses to earn cpd pointsEzyLearn Excel, MYOB and Xero online training courses count towards Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for bookkeepers and accountants. We’ve been an accredited training provider of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers ever since the organisation started in Australia. Find out how CPD points can be of benefit to you.

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When Building a Granny Flat, Here’s What You Need to Consider

Excel Can Help You with Financial Forecasting

using excel for financial forecast granny flat
Excel is a great tool if planning a big ticket project like developing a granny flat on a property.

If you have the room, building a granny flat on your property can prove to be very lucrative. EzyLearn has recently created a new Microsoft Excel exercise, using the construction of a granny flat as a case study, as part of our Excel Training Course. It was created to help students understand how to use Excel for financial forecasting, but it’s also useful to those interested in constructing a granny flat on their property.

The first thing to consider is whether it’s viable to borrow money to fund your entire granny flat project. Most people add a granny flat to their property to earn an additional income by renting it out. If this is your intention, then you need to determine whether the granny flat will become a positive cash flow investment or a negative one.

The existing property

To begin, you must determine the value of the dwelling or existing property on the land you own. Is it brand new, relatively new, older style, or very old? You should have a quantity surveyor determine the value of the existing dwelling, to determine how much of the entire property’s value — that is, the house and land — is based on land value. In most cases, land value will far exceed the value of the dwelling, however many people are surprised to learn by how much, especially if the dwelling isn’t very old. Once you know the value of the dwelling, you may be able to claim depreciation as a tax deduction.

Development costs

You should now start to factor in the development costs associated with the project. This includes the cost of demolishing any existing structures — a garage or shed, for example — and remediation of the site in the event asbestos is present. You should also have a fairly good idea of what it will cost to construct the granny flat up to the stage where you can move in. Not all granny flat construction companies take you up to this stage, often exiting at lock-up stage instead. Don’t forget to include any council fees or levies associated with constructing your granny flat.

Expected income

In the Microsoft Excel case study, both the existing dwelling and the new granny flat will be rented out as investment properties. However, you may not do the same. You need to determine how much rental income you can reasonably expect to earn from your granny flat. You should also determine whether you’re located in a region with low rental vacancy rates and high demand for long term rentals. This will determine not just the net weekly income you can expect to receive, but also the frequency at which it will be occupied, which will also factor into your bottom line.

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Considering each of these areas is just the first step in developing a comprehensive financial forecast of your granny flat project. Our Microsoft Excel Training Course, with its new granny flats case study, goes into much greater detail. Bookkeepers can also keep up their certification and earn CPD points with our Excel, MYOB and Xero courses. Visit our website for more information on our full suite of training courses. 

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Microsoft Excel 2016 & Gantt Charts for Your New Website/Business/Project

Project plans and gantt chart templates in Microsoft Excel 2016 training courses online

 

GANTT CHARTS ARE just one of the many wonderful features  Microsoft Excel and help enormously in the workplace. 

Many project managers oversee the project management and implementation of, say, a staff induction system, a new computer system or procedural changes.

Our Online Excel Training Course includes training on how to create your own project plan using Gantt charts. Continue reading Microsoft Excel 2016 & Gantt Charts for Your New Website/Business/Project

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Beginners to Advanced Microsoft Excel Course for $197 inc Exercise Files

$197 Beginners to Advanced Microsoft Excel Course includes Exercise Files

Microsoft Excel Training Course exercise files

One of the best ways of learning how to use a program is to use that program during your training. Some people can sit with programs like Microsoft Excel and learn by trying something out and making mistakes and then trying again.

[box type=”tick”]We’ve discovered that Microsoft Excel course students want to work with real world files in a logical step-by-step method that uses the exercise files for the basic skills and then keep using that file for the more advanced skills.[/box]

By the end you’ll have a powerful Microsoft Excel spreadsheet using advanced skills and because you learnt in a logical and methodical way, using gradually more complicated tools, you’ll have learnt most of the Microsoft Excel skills you’ve wanted and won’t even notice the time go by.

Real World Use of Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets

Excel training course exercise filesThe main uses for Microsoft Excel are as a:

  • Worksheet that enables you to lay out information in a logical fashion and then perform calculations with that data
  • Database that lists all of the information in a tabular format that can then be filtered and manipulated into a format that can be used in mail merges etc, and
  • Charts and graphs that visually present the information in a worksheet or table so that we humans can make sense of the information

Here are some of the ways that we use Microsoft Excel for our training business.

Present information for use in newspaper ads

In Microsoft Excel Course 303 we look at formulas and formatting and one exercise file we share with students and an example of what’s possible using Excel is the artwork we created for the newspaper ads for our courses at our training centres in Sydney. The table structure of Excel enables us to lay the information out precisely and if we need to change the dates

What costs us the most money

Yes, you can see the costs of running a business in a simple table, but when you put it in a chart you can visually see the differences in costs and in our 305 course on charting we’ll show you how to create the various different types of pie, line and bar charts as well as many other types. You’ll learn how to format the charts to make certain areas stand out and you’ll learn how to demonstrate trends.

Budgets and forecasting

It’s great when you have historical information to work with because you can spend a lot of time working out percentages, margins, budgets etc to try to figure out how you will go in the future. We include many exercise files in Microsoft Excel Course 306, including files to help you:

  • Maintain a household (or business budget)
  • Calculate sales margins and commissions for sales people (we have several different versions of this file to demonstrate how the file should look at the various stages of creating it).
  • Create a price list (including all wholesale product costings – that will be hidden from view)

 Making the right decisions

When we operated our training centres in Sydney we spent a lot of our time scheduling courses. We had to allocate training rooms, roster on our great trainers, print training materials and we needed to know when people where coming to courses. We discovered that most people who wanted to learn Microsoft Excel did a night class. We had these variables to work with:

  • The courses
  • What days people had come to these courses in the past
  • The time of the day that students had enrolled into these courses: morning, midday, evening or weekend.
  • Different training methods (class-based and Flexible Learning)

By discovering the best days and times that students had enrolled into courses from the past we were able to better schedule our courses to get the most students. It means we didn’t need to cancel courses.

See the contents of Microsoft Excel Course 308 for more information.

Figure out how to make more profit

In a business you can build a bigger business and make more profit by

  • increasing sales,
  • cutting costs,
  • focussing on your most profitable customers,
  • focussing on your most profitable products,
  • decreasing the time it takes to get your money (cash sale or terms).

Using Goal Seek in Microsoft Excel we discovered something that’ll help all independent contractors run a better more profitable business.

 

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Microsoft Excel Online Training Course: LIFETIME Student Access & Start Tomorrow

Common Questions for Computer Courses

Can I repeat the course if I don’t remember everything that is taught?

This was a common question that came up when we had our three Sydney based training centres. To make it easier for students we offered Free Repeats so that students could come back and learn the skills again. We then created training videos to complement our workbooks and in 2006 we closed our last training centre to focus on Online Computer Training Courses.

Can I start the Microsoft Excel course this week? I have Mondays and Wednesdays available.

This is a question about timing scheduling your calendar for an available course and we overcame this by recording the content of our classroom Microsoft Excel and Office training sessions as screen based videos so that students could come and visit whenever THEY had the time, not when WE scheduled the courses.

Online Microsoft Excel and MYOB training courses

With Broadband Internet and fantastic new learning technology we are able to delivery Microsoft Excel Training to you via our online course. This means you can enrol today and start by 5pm tomorrow. It also means that you can progress through the training course at your own pace using a combination of training video tutorials, training workbooks with exercise files and knowledge reviews to test your skills.

Who uses EzyLearn for Microsoft Excel Online Training courses?

Government departments, insurance companies, private companies and home users all use EzyLearn Online Computer Training courses. We recently interviewed a corporate training customer to find out why and this Case Study reveals how a leading energy reverse auction company, Energy Action, used EzyLearn’s Microsoft Excel training to manage the large amounts of data they receive to save their customers tens of thousands of dollars in energy costs: Energy Action Case Study

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EzyLearn’s Excel Course: Helping Energy Action Show Savings in Energy Cost and Consumption

IN THESE TIMES OF GLOBAL WARMING the need for businesses to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions has never been more important.

Australian company, Energy Action, prides itself on helping businesses reduce energy usage and save money. Energy Action provides an innovative flagship service it terms the ‘Australian Energy Exchange’ through which energy suppliers can competitively bid against one another for the supply of an organisation’s energy. With a best-fit contract usually secured in only 15 minutes, more than 5000 businesses have now partnered with Energy Action to maximise their energy savings, culminating in more than $5 billion worth of energy contracts.

Energy Action provides their clients with quality monthly reports showing clients’ energy demand, power factor, load factor, energy consumption, emissions and more. Their daily monitoring flags when clients’ demand targets are approached or exceeded.

Microsoft Excel Online Course 308 - pivot table value field settings
Microsoft Excel Online Course 308 - pivot table value field settings

Read how Energy Action staff learnt about Pivot Tables and Charts, Conditional Formatting, VLOOKUP and much, much more to provide a higher level of knowledge to their customers: Energy Action Case Study

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MYOB Training: Exporting MYOB Data for an Excel Mail Merge

MYOB Training Course Exported Accounts list

We recently created 9 new training videos for our online MYOB training course and one of them demonstrated how to export and import data from an MYOB training company datafile. Exporting and importing is used to extract transaction and sales information and also customer or supplier card files from MYOB to use with Microsoft Excel in performing mail merges.

We have included the simple accounts list that we use in our online MYOB bank reconciliation course as a file you can download and open up in Notepad or Microsoft Excel. The image above shows what the file looks like when opened up in Notepad. It’s called a TAB-DELIMITED text file and this example includes a header record that gives you the name of each field (column)

ACCOUNTS

If you want to learn more about TEXT format (including CSV – comma separated values) files and how to manipulate this type of data using Microsoft Excel, take a look at our Microsoft Excel course 307 (visit this link and scroll down until you see the course contents of course 307: http://ezylearnonline.com.au/courses/microsoft-excel/excel-course-outline-2/).

If you need training on Microsoft Excel and data storage types you’ll be thrilled to hear that this course is one of 9 courses that are all included for one low price and LIFETIME student membership at the EzyLearn online Microsoft Excel course. Click here to enrol.