![Using Excel for Business Analysis by Danielle [Book Review]](https://img.chandoo.org/books/using-excel-for-business-analysis-book-review.jpg)
Business analysis & modeling are new areas where a lot of fresh graduates find themselves when they start work. Unfortunately, this is also an area where there is very little structured information. Thanks to Danielle’s new book, Using Excel for Business Analysis, you can understand the basics of financial modeling, good spreadsheet design & business analysis
First up, let me congratulate my good friend Danielle for the successful launch of her first book. Today, I want to share my review of this book with you.
Who is this book for?
- If you are someone who uses Excel to analyze & model parts of a business,
- If you are not sure how to go about it
- If you started using Excel in last few years and lack structured approach to spreadsheet design
- If you are a fresh MBA hoping to become an analyst
Then this book is for you.
What does it teach?
This book aims to teach us 3 things:
- Lay clear foundations on financial modeling, business analysis and define best practices
- Explore various features of Excel that help you in business analysis & modeling
- Explain uses of Excel in various modeling & analysis scenarios.
1. Foundations:
In this Danielle explains what financial modeling is, how to choose a model and what best practices to follow. The casual tone & variety of examples in this section helps in understanding various steps in modeling and relevance of them. Towards the end of this section, Danielle shares various modeling best practices & pitfalls to avoid.
[Related: Introduction to Financial Modeling – 6 part tutorial]
2. Excel features:
This where you get to learn various Excel tools that we need to design & analyze. Danielle gives detailed explanations about various Excel formulas, formatting options, key board shortcuts, form controls etc. Once you know how to use these, you can combine them to analyze and model almost any business situation.
3. Using Excel for modeling & analysis:
In the last few chapters of her book, Danielle various common components in financial models like escalation methods, payback periods, WACC (weighted average cost of capital), tiering table, modeling depreciation etc. She also explains how to review models, rebuild inherited models, stress testing a model, performing sensitivity analysis & presenting model outputs using various Excel charts.
All in all, the 12 chapters in this book act as a handy guide to help you understand the business analysis & modeling process and how to implement it using Excel.
Should you buy it?
Back when I started working as a business analyst (in 2006), fresh after MBA, I felt like a fish in the ocean. Lost and confused. It may be due to the fact that I was part of a very large company with more than 100,000 employees. Some of my first assignments involved in-depth analysis, modeling of insurance businesses. I spent count-less hours learning Excel, Power Point, analysis techniques and made a few mistakes before understanding things. I am still learning today.
But I feel that a guide like Danielle’s book can be very handy for someone starting their career or moving to modeling stream today.
If that sounds like you, please get a copy of her book.
Note: This book does not cover in-depth modeling or advanced Excel topics. For that you should consider one of my other recommendations.
Do you have this book? How do you like it?
Have you read this book? How do you like it? Please share your views using comments.
Disclosure:
Danielle & her publisher have been kind enough to send me a copy of this book. It goes with out saying that Danielle is my good friend & partner in business when I visited Australia recently. Also, When you use above link to purchase this book from Amazon, I get a small commission. That said, my review is purely based on what is in the book and how useful it can be.
PS: Do you think I should write few more book reviews? I do read a lot of Excel, charting & VBA related books. I can write a review once in a while. Let me know thru comments.
24 Responses
I’d suggest simply using the subtotal function and filtering the data using the Win/Loss column. You get the same results and the formula is more comprehensible.
@John
That is one option.
There are times however when you want to see the whole data table or a filtered subset and still want to produce summary reports against an unfiltered field.
Is there a particular reason why you are using a comma and the unary (–) operator for the second array in the SUMPRODUCT formula? It seems to work the same if you were to string the arrays together using the asterisk (*). The advantage is that SUMPRODUCT treats the entire string of arrays as a single array.
@Mathew
Your correct, There is no difference.
I thought it may have been easier to explain this method.
Is there a way to do this on a large set of data? As in ~100,000 rows? When I try I get an error because the formula becomes too long. It says the max length of a formula is 8,192 characters. Excel 2010.
How do I incorporate a specific text within a cell for the second array. For instance, – -(C7:C13=”Apple”)
when I chose a specific text the formula does not work.
@RB
I am not sure what is the issue as if I use the sample data in the post the following work fine
Count:
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET(C7:C13,ROW(C7:C13)-MIN(ROW(C7:C13)),,1)), –(C7:C13=”L”))
Sum:
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET(C7:C13,ROW(C7:C13)-MIN(ROW(C7:C13)),,1)),(C7:C13=”L”)*(D7:D13))
You may want to check that there are no leading or trailing spaces in your list of Apples
I should have given a better explanation. Heres my situation. I have a column with cells filled with names like Column 1, Column 2, Pier 1, Pier 2, etc. If the cell just contained Pier and searched for that it works. But because it has other characters in the cell its not recognizing the pier. So how can I extract specific characters of a string of text in this formula?
Hopefully this was a better explanation
Hello-
This formula works pretty well for me except that it slow down excel and prevents some of my macros from working. I was wondering if there was a way to program this in VBA so that excel isn’t always trying to recalculate it. I would like to use a push of a button to get it to run then paste in a cell.
Thanks!
I am trying to sum filtered data in a column, but would want to ignore the negative values in the column. How to go about doing this?
@Akshay
Why not just add a filter to that column to only show the values greater than zero?
The negative values are required for reporting purposes, but their effect on the total is distorting the required output. Please advise.
@Akshay
I’d suggest making a post in the Chandoo.org Forums
http://forum.chandoo.org/
Attach a sample file to simplify the task
I have this working for counting and summing, however, I have a list and for the second array, I need a criteria. That is, I’m looking for b13:b200=”01.??.??” or =left((a1,2) or something like that. These types of criteria matches do not appear to work as I get a blank as a result.
Thanks!
@Bob
As your formula b13:b200=”01.??.??” looks like you are trying to check the first day of the month of the range
What about trying Day(B13:B200)=1
Hai Experts,
i understood this formula well and working fine in MS Excel 2013
but when the same am trying to place in google Spreadsheet it shows error as
“SUMPRODUCT has mismatched range sizes. Expected row count: 1. column count: 1. Actual row count: 2014, column count: 1.” and as a result #VALUE! Appears in cell.
Can anyone please help me how would i get it done in Google Spread sheet
or is there any other formula as a substitute for this.
Thank you very much.
thanks for providing this.. but why does excel keeps on prompting Circular referencing in cell D3?
@Vivek
I don’t know
I just downloaded the file and it is working fine and not showing that error
Goto the Formulas, Calculation Options Tab and check that Calculation is set to Automatic
What version of Excel and Windows are you using ?
I know that this forum is for MS Excel, but I am trying to help someone who is working in Google Sheets. The below formula works in Excel but Google Sheets returns:
“SUMPRODUCT has mismatched range sizes. Expected row count: 1. column count: 1. Actual row count: 39000, column count: 1.” and as a result #VALUE! Appears in cell.
This is the same problem asked by Srichirin above. Does anyone know if there is a formula for Google Sheets that will replicate what MS Excel does?
=SUMPRODUCT(SUBTOTAL(3,OFFSET($C$6:$C$39500,ROW($C$6:$C$39500)-MIN(ROW($C$6:$C$39500)),,1)),- -($C$6:$C$39500=H1),($D$6:$D$39500))
Trying to find a SUMPRODUCT formula that counts the word Closed by date for the last 7 days in a filtered list.
=COUNTIF(M:M,”>”&TODAY()-7) works ok for unfiltered count Column M contains Closure dates (blank if open) and Column L is Status Open or Closed
@ Terry
Please ask the question at the Chandoo.org Forums
https://chandoo.org/forum/
Please attach a sample file to ensure a quicker more accurate answer
I used this formula and worked like a charm! But, now I’ve been requested to use it but adding not one but two criteria in the same formula. For instance the sum I was doing added negative and positive numbers. I’ve been asked to use the exact same formula but adding that only positive numbers were considered… any idea on how to do this?
How exactly do you do sum filtered cells when two criteria are need not just one?
Thank you so much brother literally I have been struggling since morning to get the sum of the filtered category, however, after reading your blog attentively i got my solution, so thanks a lot once again.