Start learning
My learning

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration

Excel course for demand planners

For demand planners and forecast analysts cleaning sales history, preparing forecasts and reporting accuracy in Excel, The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration uses sales orders in much of its practice. This guide selects conditional totals, PivotTables, Power Query for regional files, forecast versus actual variance, meeting charts and Copilot checks for unusual rows. The course does not teach forecasting maths.

See the plans Watch free lessons

Taught by Sagnik Bhattacharya and Virginia Thorn

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration: Sagnik Bhattacharya and Virginia Thorn

What you will be able to do

At work, you will be able to:

  • Use Power Query to bring regional forecast files together, then use Unpivot to reshape monthly columns into a long table.
  • Build item, region and month summaries of sales history using SUMIFS and PivotTables, with date grouping and slicers to filter the view.
  • Apply the budget variance and percent variance formulas to forecasts and actuals, using custom number formats to colour over-forecasts and under-forecasts.
  • Prepare line and combo charts of history and forecasts for consensus meetings, with sparklines showing individual item trends within cells.
  • Ask Copilot to flag unusually large discounts and questionable entries in sales history, then use a QA checklist to check its findings before the data enters a forecast.
  • Connect history, forecast and product tables through a Power Pivot data model, and calculate regional shares using a DAX percent of total.

Projects

What you will build.

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

  • 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.

    Bring regional forecasts from a folder into a long table by turning month columns into rows, then merge in history and product names.

  • 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.

    Prepare the starting view for a consensus meeting: demand history drawn from order lines and summarised by category, region and month.

  • 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.

    Review history before using it for a forecast: Copilot flags unusual discounts and questionable rows, while a checklist helps keep incorrect AI answers out of the figures.

Lessons

The lessons that matter, in course order.

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration has 186 lessons. This page picks out 49 of them, 4 h 3 min of video. Each lesson keeps its number in the course.

Where to start

Lesson 36 SUMIF and COUNTIF in Excel

Daily Excel users can start with conditional totals for sales history at Lesson 36. Beginners should start at Lesson 1 and work through the earlier material to reach this point. If you already use SUMIFS and PivotTables routinely, start combining files with Power Query at Lesson 153.

49 of 186 lessons · 4 h 3 min

04 Essential formulas and functions (IF, SUMIF and more) 4 of 13 lessons · 25 min Sales orders provide the demand history for these lessons. Summarise it by item, region and month with SUMIF and SUMIFS, count orders with COUNTIFS, and assign orders to periods with date functions including MONTH.
  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
  3. 38 The Excel function library Insert Function dialog and Formula AutoComplete 5 min
  4. 39 Date and time functions in Excel TODAY, NOW, MONTH and date arithmetic 6 min
06 Data visualisation: charts and graphs 7 of 9 lessons · 34 min Prepare readable visuals for the consensus meeting, from chart selection and formatting to line charts showing history over time. Use a secondary axis in combo charts and cell-sized sparklines to show each item's trend.
  1. 48 Choosing the right Excel chart Column, line, pie, combo and modern chart types 4 min
  2. 49 Column charts in Excel Insert, format and label a column chart 5 min
  3. 50 Line charts in Excel Show trends over time with a line chart 4 min
  4. 51 Pie charts in Excel Show proportions and parts of a whole 4 min
  5. 52 Combo charts in Excel Column and line chart with a secondary axis 4 min
  6. 53 Formatting charts in Excel Titles, data labels, colours and chart styles 7 min
  7. 54 Sparklines in Excel Line, column and win-loss mini charts in cells 5 min
07 PivotTables and PivotCharts: data analysis made easy 10 lessons · 33 min Turn individual sales orders into PivotTable summaries of history by product category, region and month. The lessons cover date grouping, slicer filters, PivotCharts and refreshing the results when another month's sales arrive.
  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
10 Boosting productivity with AI in Excel (Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude) 5 of 17 lessons · 19 min Plan an analysis with ChatGPT before building it, and use Copilot to clean untidy data, flag large discounts and suspect entries, and create a mini dashboard. Check AI answers for errors with a QA checklist.
  1. 96 Find outliers with Copilot in Excel Discounts, negative profit, suspect rows 7 min
  2. 97 Clean messy data with Copilot in Excel AI prompts plus Excel functions 4 min
  3. 98 Mini dashboard with Copilot in Excel KPIs, charts and slicers on one page 3 min
  4. 99 Check AI output in Excel A quick QA checklist for Copilot results 2 min
  5. 100 ChatGPT as your analysis planner Plan an Excel analysis before you build it 3 min
12 Project: FinanceGuard budget variance analyser (budget vs actual Excel dashboard) 2 of 10 lessons · 6 min The budget versus actual exercises teach variance through subtraction and percent variance through division. Apply those calculations to forecast error, then use custom number formats to distinguish over-forecasts and under-forecasts by colour.
  1. 118 Budget variance in Excel Calculate variance and percent variance 4 min
  2. 119 Custom number formats in Excel Show budget variances with colours and signs 2 min
15 SalesFusion: advanced data tools and a Power Query modelling system 21 lessons · 2 h 7 min In SalesFusion, combine sales files from a folder with Power Query, append history, merge product and region names, and reshape month columns with Unpivot. Build a Power Pivot data model and use DAX measures for totals and percent of total. Excel for Windows is required for the Power Pivot lessons.
  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

Instructors

Who teaches it.

Virginia Thorn smiling at the camera, dark hair tied back, wearing a navy top.

Instructor, Excel with AI

Virginia Thorn

Emmy Award winner. Teaches Excel with AI at Coding Liquids.

Questions

Asked before starting.

Which Excel course suits a demand planner's work?

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration from Coding Liquids suits the spreadsheet work surrounding a forecast. Much of the practice uses sales orders, making the data familiar to demand planners. It covers PivotTables for item and month history, Power Query for combining regional files, variance formulas for comparing forecasts with actuals, and consensus meeting charts. This page selects 49 lessons, with a combined duration of 4 hours 3 minutes.

Will demand planners learn forecasting methods such as exponential smoothing in the course?

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration does not teach statistical forecasting, including exponential smoothing or FORECAST.ETS. Demand planning software and S&OP process design are also outside its scope. Its focus is preparing the spreadsheet data around a forecast: cleaning, combining and summarising history, comparing forecasts with actuals, and presenting the results.

Can a demand planner use these lessons to measure forecast accuracy and bias?

The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration supplies the building blocks through budget variance and percent variance calculations. Those formulas can calculate forecast error for each item, and SUMIFS can total the errors by region or month to reveal the direction of bias. It does not teach accuracy measures such as MAPE; you need to add your team's chosen formula.

Can demand planners bring regional forecast files together with Power Query?

Yes, provided the files follow a common layout. In The Complete Excel Course with AI Integration, Power Query brings a folder's files together in a single step and appends a new period to existing history. Unpivot changes monthly columns into rows suitable for PivotTables. The Power Pivot model built from that data requires Excel for Windows.

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

Finance and accounting
HR and office administration
Operations and supply chain
Data and reporting
Sales, marketing and customer service
Business and management
Engineering, construction and manufacturing
Retail, property and hospitality
Healthcare and life sciences
Education and careers
Public sector, non-profit and legal
Technology

By level and topic