Start learning
My learning

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration

Excel course for accountants and finance teams

For accountants, financial analysts and finance teams who build their reports in Excel. This page picks out the parts of The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration that finance work uses most: the budget vs actual report, variance analysis, lookups across sheets, PivotTables, financial functions, and Power Query for the exports that arrive every month.

See the plans Watch free lessons

Taught by Sagnik Bhattacharya and Virginia Thorn

What you will be able to do

At work, you will be able to:

  • Build the budget vs actual report finance teams send every month, from two raw tables to a dashboard with KPI cards, a combo chart and slicers.
  • Calculate variance and percent variance, and show them with custom number formats that colour an overspend and an underspend.
  • Pull a value from another sheet with XLOOKUP, VLOOKUP or INDEX and MATCH, and handle what is missing with IFERROR.
  • Total by category, month or department with SUMIFS and with PivotTables, and work out month ends and working days with EOMONTH and NETWORKDAYS.
  • Combine a folder of monthly exports into one clean table with Power Query, then measure total sales, margin percent and percent of total with DAX.
  • Model an investment or a retirement plan with FV and XIRR, with inflation built in, and test it against tougher scenarios.

Projects

What you will build.

The course has 14 projects. These five matter most here.

  • Budget vs actual dashboard in Excel (FinanceGuard): total budget, actuals and variance cards above a monthly line chart and a column chart by department.

    Project 09

    FinanceGuard

    The budget vs actual report finance teams send every month.

    The monthly budget vs actual report from start to finish: a model that recalculates when the data changes, variances by department in their colours, and a dashboard a manager can filter.

  • SIP and SWP retirement simulator in Excel (WealthFlow): withdrawal and investment plans beside four charts of corpus, withdrawals and portfolio growth over 30 years.

    Project 10

    WealthFlow

    A retirement plan that shows how long the money lasts.

    Financial functions at work: FV for growth, XIRR for the rate of return, real values after inflation, and a plan tested against tougher scenarios.

  • Power Query sales report in Excel (SalesFusion): sales by category, sales by region and a monthly trend, with slicers for channel, year, category and region.

    Project 12

    SalesFusion

    A sales report that refreshes itself from a folder of files.

    Month end without copy and paste: a folder of exports becomes one clean table, and the report built on it refreshes in one click.

  • Excel PivotTables and a PivotChart of sales data (SalesPlusPerformance): net sales by product category as a column chart, with State, Region and City filters.

    Project 05

    SalesPlusPerformance

    A sales question answered in seconds, straight from the order data.

    The PivotTable habits finance work leans on: totals by category and by month, grouping by date, slicers and Refresh All.

  • Claude AI in Excel fixing a formula: the Claude panel explains the mistake in a unit cost column and edits the cells, beside the profit percentage column.

    Project 14

    Agentic AI in Excel

    AI finds and fixes the formula; you check it before it counts.

    Claude finds the mistake in a unit cost formula and fixes it, and you learn what to check before a figure is trusted.

Lessons

The lessons that matter, in course order.

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration has 186 lessons. This page picks out 76 of them, 6 h 27 min of video. Each lesson keeps its number in the course.

Where to start

Lesson 36 SUMIF and COUNTIF in Excel

Begin at Lesson 36 if you already enter data and write simple formulas: conditional totals are where finance work in Excel starts. New to Excel? Begin at Lesson 1; the course builds up to this point. If SUMIFS, PivotTables and XLOOKUP are already daily tools, go straight to Lesson 115, where FinanceGuard begins.

76 of 186 lessons · 6 h 27 min

04 Essential formulas and functions (IF, SUMIF and more) 2 of 13 lessons · 15 min Conditional totals, first with one condition and then with several. SUMIFS is the function the budget vs actual model is built on.
  1. 36 Start here SUMIF and COUNTIF in Excel Conditional sum and count with one criterion 8 min
  2. 37 SUMIFS and COUNTIFS in Excel Sum and count with multiple criteria 7 min
07 PivotTables and PivotCharts: data analysis made easy 10 lessons · 33 min PivotTables turn thousands of rows into totals by month, category or region, and refresh when the data changes. The lessons use sales orders; a ledger export works the same way.
  1. 57 PivotTables 101 in Excel What a PivotTable does and the sales dataset 5 min
  2. 58 Preparing data for PivotTables Clean data with TRIM, PROPER, find and replace 5 min
  3. 59 Create your first PivotTable in Excel Insert a PivotTable from a sales table 1 min
  4. 60 PivotTable fields in Excel Rows, values, columns and Value Field Settings 2 min
  5. 61 PivotTable summaries in Excel Sales by product category and grouping by date 4 min
  6. 62 Slicers in Excel Filter PivotTables with clickable buttons 3 min
  7. 63 PivotCharts in Excel Create interactive charts from a PivotTable 5 min
  8. 64 PivotTable design Tab Report layouts, PivotTable styles and number formats 5 min
  9. 65 Refresh a PivotTable in Excel Update pivots when source data changes 2 min
  10. 66 Excel Ninja Challenge PivotTable sales by region, category and monthly trend 1 min
08 Advanced Excel functions: lookups, text and arrays 12 lessons · 54 min Lookups that pull a value from another sheet (VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, INDEX and MATCH, with IFERROR for the gaps), month ends and working days with EOMONTH and NETWORKDAYS, and lists that update themselves with UNIQUE, FILTER and SORT.
  1. 67 Lookup functions in Excel The PeopleInsight HR dataset and why lookups matter 2 min
  2. 68 VLOOKUP in Excel Find employee data across sheets with exact match 4 min
  3. 69 XLOOKUP in Excel Exact match, if not found and two-way lookup 6 min
  4. 70 IFERROR in Excel Handle lookup errors in VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP formulas 3 min
  5. 71 INDEX and MATCH in Excel A flexible alternative to VLOOKUP 6 min
  6. 72 CONCAT and TEXTJOIN in Excel Combine employee names and text with a delimiter 3 min
  7. 73 LEFT, RIGHT and MID in Excel Extract parts of a text code like DAL-SAL-0001 7 min
  8. 74 TODAY, EOMONTH and NETWORKDAYS in Excel Date calculations for HR data 5 min
  9. 75 UNIQUE function in Excel Extract a distinct list with dynamic arrays 6 min
  10. 76 FILTER function in Excel Dynamic array filtering with AND and OR criteria 5 min
  11. 77 SORT and SORTBY in Excel Sort data dynamically with formulas 4 min
  12. 78 Excel Ninja Challenge XLOOKUP, totals and text concatenation lookup challenge 3 min
10 Boosting productivity with AI in Excel (Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude) 10 of 17 lessons · 42 min AI as a second pair of eyes: Copilot and ChatGPT draft formula columns that you verify, Copilot hunts for odd discounts and negative profit, a short checklist catches a wrong answer, and Claude analyses data inside Excel.
  1. 95 Excel formulas with AI Copilot and ChatGPT write formula columns you verify 6 min
  2. 96 Find outliers with Copilot in Excel Discounts, negative profit, suspect rows 7 min
  3. 97 Clean messy data with Copilot in Excel AI prompts plus Excel functions 4 min
  4. 98 Mini dashboard with Copilot in Excel KPIs, charts and slicers on one page 3 min
  5. 99 Check AI output in Excel A quick QA checklist for Copilot results 2 min
  6. 100 ChatGPT as your analysis planner Plan an Excel analysis before you build it 3 min
  7. 101 COPILOT function in Excel Use Copilot as a formula inside your cells 4 min
  8. 102 Copilot guided help in Excel Step-by-step AI help inside Excel 3 min
  9. 103 Microsoft Stride for Excel The Office Agent that builds workbooks for you 4 min
  10. 104 Claude in Excel Analyse data and build spreadsheets with Claude 7 min
12 Project: FinanceGuard budget variance analyser (budget vs actual Excel dashboard) 10 lessons · 52 min The centre of this path, FinanceGuard: budget and actuals tables, a model built with SUMIFS, UNIQUE, VSTACK and LET, variance and percent variance, custom number formats that colour them, then KPI cards, a combo chart and slicers.
  1. 115 FinanceGuard budget vs actual dashboard Excel project overview 3 min
  2. 116 Excel tables for budget and actual data Organise the FinanceGuard datasets 4 min
  3. 117 Budget vs actual model in Excel SORT, UNIQUE, VSTACK, LET, TEXTSPLIT, SUMIFS 8 min
  4. 118 Budget variance in Excel Calculate variance and percent variance 4 min
  5. 119 Custom number formats in Excel Show budget variances with colours and signs 2 min
  6. 120 PivotTables for budget vs actual The FinanceGuard pivot workspace 8 min
  7. 121 KPI cards in Excel Summary cards for a budget variance dashboard 4 min
  8. 122 Budget vs actual charts in Excel Combo chart with secondary axis for variance 5 min
  9. 123 Slicers and PivotCharts in Excel Interactive FinanceGuard budget dashboard 4 min
  10. 124 Finish the FinanceGuard dashboard in Excel Final polish and variance insights 10 min
13 WealthFlow investment and retirement simulator 11 lessons · 1 h 5 min WealthFlow: monthly investing with yearly step-ups, withdrawals in retirement and inflation, modelled with FV, XIRR and IF, then tested against tougher scenarios.
  1. 125 SIP and SWP calculators What is an SIP, lump sum and compounding 6 min
  2. 126 SIP and SWP calculators What is an SWP, inflation and FIRE 6 min
  3. 127 WealthFlow SIP model in Excel Input assumptions, XIRR and monthly rate 6 min
  4. 128 WealthFlow SIP model in Excel Step-up SIP table and FV formulas 6 min
  5. 129 WealthFlow SIP model in Excel Real portfolio value, inflation and charts 7 min
  6. 130 WealthFlow SWP model in Excel Real rate, corpus and yearly withdrawals 6 min
  7. 131 WealthFlow SWP model in Excel Real corpus, stress test and SWP chart 5 min
  8. 132 Retirement simulator in Excel WealthFlow inputs, year and age columns 5 min
  9. 133 Retirement simulator in Excel SIP, withdrawal and portfolio formulas with IF 7 min
  10. 134 Retirement simulator in Excel Reading the results and retirement scenarios 5 min
  11. 135 Retirement simulator in Excel Claude builds the WealthFlow dashboard 5 min
15 SalesFusion: advanced data tools and a Power Query modelling system 21 lessons · 2 h 7 min SalesFusion: Power Query loads a folder of CSV files, cleans them and joins them into one table, Power Pivot relates the tables, and DAX measures give total sales, margin percent and percent of total.
  1. 153 SalesFusion Power Query project Excel ETL pipeline and data model overview 5 min
  2. 154 Introduction to Power Query in Excel The ETL workflow explained 5 min
  3. 155 Import a CSV with Power Query Get data from text and transform data 2 min
  4. 156 Clean columns in Power Query Remove and rename columns for modelling 5 min
  5. 157 Clean text in Power Query Trim, clean, replace values and fix text case 6 min
  6. 158 Data types in Power Query Fix date, whole number, decimal and text types 7 min
  7. 159 Date columns in Power Query Add year, month and year-month fields for reports 7 min
  8. 160 Business logic in Power Query Custom and conditional columns for profitability 6 min
  9. 161 Group By in Power Query Summarise sales by month and region to validate data 5 min
  10. 162 Close and Load in Power Query Connection only, table or Data Model 5 min
  11. 163 Merge queries in Power Query Look up product and region names with a left join 5 min
  12. 164 Reuse a Power Query pipeline Duplicate queries for a new year of sales data 5 min
  13. 165 Append queries in Power Query Combine 2024 and 2025 sales tables 3 min
  14. 166 From Folder in Power Query Combine every sales file in a folder automatically 9 min
  15. 167 From Folder automation in Power Query Profit metrics and fiscal year columns 7 min
  16. 168 Build a sales fact table in Power Query Merge lookups and append history 6 min
  17. 169 Power Pivot Data Model in Excel Relationships and Diagram View 6 min
  18. 170 DAX measures in Power Pivot Total sales, margin percent and percent of total 10 min
  19. 171 PivotTable report from the Data Model Format the SalesFusion report in Excel 5 min
  20. 172 Interactive Excel dashboard Data model PivotTables, slicers and styling 10 min
  21. 173 Unpivot columns in Power Query Turn wide month columns into a long table 8 min

Questions

Asked before starting.

Is there an Excel course for accountants and finance teams?

Yes. The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration from Coding Liquids is built around projects, and several of them are finance work: FinanceGuard, a budget vs actual dashboard with a variance engine; WealthFlow, an investment and retirement model with FV and XIRR; and SalesFusion, a Power Query, Power Pivot and DAX report. This page lists the 76 lessons that matter most to finance work, 6 hours 27 minutes of the course's 16 hours.

Does the course teach budget vs actual and variance analysis in Excel?

Yes. The FinanceGuard section of The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration starts from a budget table and an actuals table, builds the model with SORT, UNIQUE, VSTACK, LET, TEXTSPLIT and SUMIFS, calculates variance and percent variance, colours them with custom number formats, and finishes as a dashboard with PivotTables, KPI cards, a combo chart and slicers.

Can I build a financial model with this course?

Two kinds of model, yes. FinanceGuard in The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration is a budget vs actual model written with dynamic array functions, so it recalculates when the budget or actual tables change. WealthFlow models monthly investing, withdrawals in retirement and inflation with FV, XIRR and IF, then tests the plan against tougher scenarios. Three-statement models, discounted cash flow and valuation are not taught.

Does it cover accounting rules, tax or bookkeeping?

No. The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration teaches Excel, not accounting. It assumes you know your own ledgers, policies and reporting rules, and shows how to build the reports faster and with fewer manual steps. Its datasets are budgets, sales orders and investment plans.

Will it help with month-end reporting?

With the Excel part of it. In The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration SalesFusion turns a folder of monthly exports into one clean table and a report that refreshes in one click, FinanceGuard sets budget against actuals and colours each variance, and PivotTables total a period by category or by month. Closing the books itself is not covered.

Excel with AI

See the whole course.

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration: 16 hours of video in 186 lessons, built around 14 projects, with lifetime access, a Certificate of Completion and a 14-day money-back guarantee.

See the plans Watch free lessons

The same course

For another job, level or topic.

By job

By level and topic