This is a guest post written by Paramdeep from Pristine. Chandoo.org is partnering with Pristine to bring an excel financial modeling online training program for you.
This is Part 1 of 6 on Financial Modeling using Excel
In this and next 5 posts, we are going to learn how to build a financial model to do project evaluation using Excel. The 6 parts of this tutorial are,
- Introduction to Financial Modeling
- Building a layout for Project Evaluation Model – Best practices
- Building Inputs and Assumptions Sheet
- Building Projections for Project Evaluation
- Modeling the Cash Flow Statement and Projections
- Putting it all together – Final Project Evaluation Model
- Join our Financial Modeling Classes
What is financial modeling?
Financial modeling is creating a complete program/ structure, which helps you in coming to a decision regarding investment in a project/ company. Now this could be on a simple piece of paper or in excel. The advantage with excel is that, even if you have calculation speed and accuracy like me (this is one place where I am like Einstien!), then also you would be able to come to the right conclusion!
Who does Financial Modeling?
Anybody dealing with any decision related to money (wish there was somebody who did not require that!). If you are involved in financial decision making/ planning related to large corporate, then you would definitely need financial modelling day in and day out. Financial modeling is a mandatory activity for investment bankers, bankers, project finance persons, equity research folks, PE & VCs.
What are the steps in building a financial model?
- Data collection – This is where the real front end banker works. She goes to the client, collects the data like revenue, growth, investments, need for money, etc.
- Back of the envelope calculations – Now most of the corporate guys are very hunky dory about their business. They usually think that their idea is one of a kind and is going to generate loads of mullah. Banker would sanitize their thoughts and try to figure out, if the business makes sense. Initially the thinking and analysis is very simple,
- Does the corporate guy look sober to me?
- How soon can I get my investment back?
- Is the revenue that he is projecting seem greater than the market size? 😉
You usually need no industry knowledge for this. Just keep your eyes and ears open and put your thinking cap on!
- Structured approach to thinking – Once the basic numbers seem reasonable (they make business sense and seem to be true as well), you have to dig deeper! This is where you need a complete financial model. And the first real step to doing that is to think of a structure of analysis. Thankfully finance has some basic theories in place and you can rely on them to proceed:
- Cash is the king – The more cash is generated (from the operations of the business) the better is the business
- Money today is better than money tomorrow – technically this can be called Time value of money. But it does not matter!
Practically these are the fundamental building blocks of analysis and you have to start thinking in these terms for the analysis
- Deciding on a Layout – Now when you start to put this plan in excel, the starting point is deciding on a layout for your financial model. Usually the following questions need to be answered:
- How much information/ data would your model have? If its going to be large, then it might make sense to break the model in multiple sheets
- What kind of assumptions would your model make? For better readability, we would try to keep assumptions in a different heading than the calculations and the final conclusion
- Different fonts/ formatting for assumptions and other parts might enhance readability as well
- Create logical modules for your model
- Keep your P&L, Balance Sheet, cash flow statement, etc. separate
- Even in P&L, keep the revenue generation separate from costs
One Advice for Aspiring Financial Modelers
Speed is the Key: Finally when you are dealing with tons of information, you can easily get bored. If you remember a bunch of keyboard shortcuts, then it would be very beneficial! Here are some resources to get you started:
- Comprehensive list of Excel Keyboard Shortcuts: Lists 97 shortcuts organized by functionality and usefulness.
- Favorite Shortcuts as voted by readers: Keyboard shortcuts shared by our readers.
- Using Mouse Effectively – Part 1 & Part 2: If you are going to use mouse, you better be productive at it.
An Example Financial Modeling Case
Now to make your life easy, we have done the first two parts for you! 🙂 There is a case (In the attached PDF file) that lists a situation and some of the data you might need to organize your thoughts. The decision is simple, would you advice Mr. Samar to invest in design Y?
Download the case pdf from here [pdf].
Once you have read the case and analyzed the numbers try creating a model for evaluation. Remember to make the layout of your model in such a way that navigation becomes easier.
What Next?
In the next installment of this tutorial, learn how to create a layout / template for our project evaluation model. We also discuss about some of the best practices to follow when building models in excel.
Join our Financial Modeling Classes
We are glad to inform that our new financial modeling & project finance modeling online class is ready for your consideration.
Please click here to learn more about the program & sign-up.
Share your Experience:
Do you build financial models? What is your experience like? What process do you follow and how do you plan the model? Do share your ideas and methods thru comments.
Added by Chandoo:
Thank you Paramdeep & Pristine:
Many thanks to Paramdeep and Pristine for making this happen. I am really enjoying this series and learning a lot of valuable tricks about financial modeling.
If you like this series, say thanks to Paramdeep. I am sure he can take any amount of appreciation without choking.
Join our Newsletter
if you are new here, consider joining my newsletter, because I can send you updates when new articles are posted (plus you get a cool e-book with 95 excel tips, free)
Pristine is an awesome training institute for CFA, PRIMA, GARP etc. They have trained folks at HSBC, BoA etc. Chandoo.org is partnering with Pristine to bring an excel financial modeling online training program for you.
32 Responses to “More than 3 Conditional Formats in Excel”
Dude,
Long time... whts up , I see that urs is the only business which is posting a "Excel" lent growth in this recessionary market....
Still alive ... so you will be able to reach me if make an attempt... 🙂
V E R Y N I C E !!!!
Hi Chandoo.
When I use your macro in my file, I keep getting a Compile Error because the "cell" variable is not defined.
Any suggestions?
@Lincoln: Did you have "option explicit" on?
I am sorry, I didn't define the cell variable.
you can add this line to the code just below the line "dim i"
dim cellLet me know if you still get this error...
Ah. I've simply declared cell as a range.
All good now
Noob at work.
Thanks for the article. Very helpful. 🙂
very, very helpful. I didn't know what "define named ranges" meant. one of my colleagues figured it out. I suggest you add the instruction "go to menu - insert/name/define and then make sure the cells at the bottom of the box change to reflect new values if you redefine the range." thanks.
Quite Intresting. If anyone could help. I am trying to do something like this but i want to define values and colours of the value in a range of cells ( Similiar) but i want the other cells to change colour when the value is same as the range defined. ANy help. I want instantaneous( Like conditional formatting) not like running macro.
@Jahabar: Welcome to PHD and thanks for the comments.
If your source range and target range have same dimensions and source range has 4 different formats (conditional formatting limitation, unless you are using excel 2007) you can do this. If you have more than 4 formats then you may have to use VBA (and create an event like worksheet_change and monitor the range).
Let me know if you come across a simple non-vba solution for this. 🙂
very nice post...
May I suggest a little modification of the code?
Adding "Application.ScreenUpdating = False" at the beggining of the macro and "Application.ScreenUpdating = True" at the end speeds up significantly the whole procedure. As well as omitting "Operation:=xlNone, SkipBlanks:=False, Transpose:=False".
Not a big deal in this example, but when formatting a larger range of cells, the difference is marked. I've tried to format the number 1457 of cells and the formatting was done 11 seconds faster. :-O
[...] you can overcome the conditional formatting limitation using VBA macros (again, if you are new to excel, you may want to wait few weeks before plunging in to [...]
Hi Chandoo
Thanks for this macro. I have done few changes to this macro to suit my needs. I had removed the defined names data2use and conditions2use to ActiveWindow.RangeSelection.Address
This way I can select the cells that require conditional formatting and then run the macro.
Kind Regards,
Vasanth
Chandoo, I am using 2007. I noticed the conditional formatting options are different - and they have some built in funtictions for stop light displays, and other dashboard type elements. My question is this, I need to display more colors in the stop light than the standard 3. The World Health Org (WHO) has a Pandemic Flu alert level between 0-6, so i wanted to drive a sharepoint dashboard using excel based on 7 distinct levels. Suggestions?
@ASM: very good idea. you can use font based symbols instead of excel traffic light icons to achieve this. the character "=" becomes a small circle when you change the font to "webdings". So you just need to insert a bunch of = signs and use conditional formatting to change the font color. If you need to combine numbers with symbols, then you can use 2 columns instead of one and format them accordingly. Let me know if you need some more help with this.
Also, if possible, share with us your dashboard when it is ready.
[...] Once we calculate values for all team members using the above formula, we can apply conditional formatting to make the heat map. In Excel 2007, this is one step. In earlier versions of excel, you need to specify 3 conditions to make the heatmap look hot enough or use a macro to get over the 3 conditional formats limitation. [...]
Chandoo,
Why do you use the "conditions2use" since you can change the VBA and replace "conditions2use" with "data2use" and you won't have to create a zone for conditional formating equal to the data zone.
The Data will be formated according the "formats2use". Just one thing, if you plan to have some "0" on your data zone, they will be formated like the first cell above your "formats2use" (the green cell with "Formats" inside in your exemple".
That's why you should leave a white empty cell above the first cell of the "formats2use" zone.
Regards,
Pitichat
Seeing as no one has posted what they actually might use something like this for here's my 2cents;
I used the same concepts to build a heatmap of a casino gaming floor, with each populated cell representing a gaming machine (Slot Machine), some simple metric bucketing to determine different shades for the cells, user selectable colours, ability to pick a 'machine' (click on a cell) and repaint the 'floor' showing only machines with similar charateristics, select a value range and repaint the 'floor' showing only the 'machines' within the value range. Users could switch between metrics and repaint the the floor.
It took a while to put together, but once in use was rolled out to four casinos and used for 4 years. It provided a portable (i.e. no custom software), easy to understand way to manage product from individual machine to groups / classes of product and made it very easy to see how products were performing in geographic relation to each other (something that tables & graphs can't easily do)
Needless to say it "wowed" many people who only saw Excel as a tool for managing numbers and table based reports
Being excel just about any user could maintain spreadsheet.
@ Justin B - Hey Justin, that counds AWESOME! Can I get a copy of the casino tracker, I work within a similar industry and would love to see how you've constructed it.
Also, from using this heatmap, I think I'm getting confused. To make the map change color, I thought you had to change the DATA2USE cells, but I see it only changes if you change the vales of thew cells within the CONDITIONS2USE cells. Am I thinking this wrong?????
Thanks all, this is REALLY making my life easier!!
Hi Dude,
Thanks for this very useful macro. That was very helpful.
Kepp up the good work.
Cheers.
Explanation like yours is so important to everyone that want to learn more and more in Excel. Thanks a lot. You are the man ! 🙂
[...] http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/10/14/more-than-3-conditional-formats-in-excel/ [...]
Chandoo,
If I wanted to replace the numbers 1-9 with text A-I, what would I need to do to the macro to make it work correctly?
Thanks!
@Lee
If the numbers are alone and not part of larger numbers >10 or with text you can simply use this formula
=CHAR(A1+64)Change A1 to your cell
Copy Down/Across as required
Then select the new cells and copy/paste as Values over themselves.
I'm trying to do a drop down list that will allow me to select a color and when I select that color it will change my cell to that color. i cannot use contion formating because I have 5 colors. Can you help me with this?
thanks
This tool was great. Can you please suggest a way to include conditions like if value in a cell lies in a range color some other cell red.
What do I need to change in the programing if I have a mix of numbers and letters. Example; 5003, 2B01, W005, 1020. I think the problem is the CInt code but I'm not sure.
EXCELlent - was able to use your macro with no problems. Found that modifying it to use the DATA2USE range achived the same result as using the condition2use range. If the two ranges were equal, your way allows the data range to have completely different values and still have the same color format at the end.
My data is a little different
I have an irregular shaped building with students in it.
I have a list of students assigned to the rooms with the courses they are on
and a color code for the courses
would there be a way of using indirect to translate the student names to color code the rooms to what courses they are on?
[...] hi Check below link More than 3 Conditional Formats in Microsoft Excel - How to? | Chandoo.org - Learn Microsoft Excel O... [...]
The ability to conditional format a range of cells based on criteria in a different, but matching for size, range of cells is exactly what I've been looking for. Unfortunately the macro falls over at the line conditions (i) = CInt (cell.value). I have specified the 3 rangenames, working in excel 2003 but cannot get it to work. Any ideas. I've checked rangenames several times (0-16 being used) but no luck. Thanks
Hello you also can use this code to force ur worksheet to run with more then on condition.
in this case the condition = case like in example if u want to format something between of the range 0 to 100 for a color
Set I = Intersect(Target, Range("B2:B8")) <-- thatch the rage u want to work with just set it up for range of cell u want to use to format
the second formula will show u Interior color nr index just time it and when u format the cell with a color it will show nr in the cell
enjoy
Private Sub Worksheet_Change(ByVal Target As Range)Set I = Intersect(Target, Range("B2:B8"))
If Not I Is Nothing Then
Select Case Target
Case 0 To 100: NewColor = 37 ' light blue
Case 101 To 200: NewColor = 46 ' orange
Case 201 To 300: NewColor = 12 ' dark yellow
Case 301 To 400: NewColor = 10 ' green
Case 401 To 600: NewColor = 3 ' red
Case 601 To 1000: NewColor = 20 ' lighter blue
End Select
Target.Interior.ColorIndex = NewColor
End If
End Sub
Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)
Range("F1:F1") = Range("F1:F1").Interior.ColorIndex
End Sub
Hi Chandoo,
I tried to add the "More than 3 conditional formats for Excel" VBA macro
to my Excel 2008 for Mac and it didn't work. Would this VBA macro work
with Excel 2011 for Mac? Does it have to be a certain version: Student,
Home & Office, or Standard?
Thanks for your help.
Tom
[…] here is one vba macro that might be better if need lots of cases http://chandoo.org/wp/2008/10/14/more-than-3-conditional-formats-in-excel/ […]