Book Image

Hands-On Financial Modeling with Excel for Microsoft 365 - Second Edition

By : Shmuel Oluwa
Book Image

Hands-On Financial Modeling with Excel for Microsoft 365 - Second Edition

By: Shmuel Oluwa

Overview of this book

Financial modeling is a core skill required by anyone who wants to build a career in finance. Hands-On Financial Modeling with Excel for Microsoft 365 explores financial modeling terminologies with the help of Excel. Starting with the key concepts of Excel, such as formulas and functions, this updated second edition will help you to learn all about referencing frameworks and other advanced components for building financial models. As you proceed, you'll explore the advantages of Power Query, learn how to prepare a 3-statement model, inspect your financial projects, build assumptions, and analyze historical data to develop data-driven models and functional growth drivers. Next, you'll learn how to deal with iterations and provide graphical representations of ratios, before covering best practices for effective model testing. Later, you'll discover how to build a model to extract a statement of comprehensive income and financial position, and understand capital budgeting with the help of end-to-end case studies. By the end of this financial modeling Excel book, you'll have examined data from various use cases and have developed the skills you need to build financial models to extract the information required to make informed business decisions.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Part 1 – Financial Modeling Overview
4
Part 2 – The Use of Excel Features and Functions for Financial Modeling
8
Part 3 – Building an Integrated 3-Statement Financial Model with Valuation by DCF
15
Part 4 – Case Study

Building assumptions

A financial model can be defined as a collection of mathematical assumptions for the purpose of projecting the results, financial position, and cash flow of a business into the future, often with the aim of arriving at value for the business.

Building reliable assumptions is critical to the success and viability of your model.

The following is a quick checklist. Your assumptions should be as follows:

  • Based on actual historical figures
  • Realistic
  • Clearly explained
  • Easily verifiable
  • Properly documented
  • Visually distinguishable in your model (usually with a different font) from calculated cells

Let's dive deeper into the history and foundation of building assumptions.

Historical data

The foundation for building assumptions that we will use to forecast the company's results for the next 5 years is the company's historical financials. You will therefore need to obtain 3 or 5 years of the company's financial...