8 Best Online Excel Courses for Finance

For anyone looking to improve their spreadsheet tool usage in the finance niche, taking some courses has become essential. 

You might not know it, but you can use this acquired knowledge to improve your excel usage proficiency. So, what are the best online Excel courses for finance?

When you consider the rapid increase of mediocre finance Excel users, you find out that taking courses will make you unique. Additionally, having certification in these courses can increase your employment opportunities.

After much research, I found the best eight online excel finance courses. So let’s dive into it.

8 Best Online Excel Courses for Finance

Generally, each course has its unique duration, material requirement, and importance to Excel finance students. And in this section, I will be highlighting the best online Excel course for finance.

Let’s see the top best online courses;

Excel Beginner to Pro: Financial Modeling and Valuation

About this course

This course provides all the basic and standard information about Excel and its usage. Whether you are a novice, an intermediate, or an expert excel user, this course has something new to teach you.

As a graduate or undergraduate student looking to pursue a career in financial advising or investment banking, this course is the ideal take. In addition, this course provides learning students with ways to improve their Excel skills and practices.

In Financial Modeling and Valuation, you get to learn keyboard shortcuts and build a complete P&L and discounted cash flow model. Additionally, you also learn about SUMIFS, capital budgeting, and Tesla valuation. 

Why is this course good?

• It focuses on both expert and novice Excel users.
• The students get to have an understanding of every helpful keyboard shortcut in Excel.
• You learn about the basic and standard financial modelling fundamentals.
• It applies the use of actual case studies.

Who this course for:

• All finance students that are looking to learn how to use Excel.
• Graduates that aspire to become financial consultants and investment bankers.
• People who want to improve on their Excel usage.

Course offered by:

• Udemy.
• 365 Careers.
• The University of Cape Town.

Duration: 1 – 2 days (including 9 articles, 595 downloadable resources, and 13 hours on-demand video).

Level: Beginner.

Introduction to Data Analysis through Excel

About this course

This course broadens your views on how data analysis operates and its powers that help in decision making. You will learn the new ways of performing data analysis faster and more efficiently with Excel’s new popular features.

In addition, this course will showcase the power of Excel pivots, revealing its ability to summarise data and enable quick data exploration. Finally, for newbie Excel users, this course teaches how to create aggregate reports with formula-based methods. 

As a plus, you also learn how to create pivot tables – ranging from columns and rows in Excel. Finally, it teaches you how to calculate margins and other common ratios.

Why is this course good?

• It enables students to learn how to analyse data with Excel.
• Allows you to represent future data high pivot charts.
• It shows you how to filter all data shown in the pivot.
• It teaches how to use added calculations to columns.

Who this course is for:

• People looking to learn how to create and integrate data in Excel.
• Student finance advisors and future consultants.

Course offered by:

• edX.
• Coursera. 
• Rice online learning.

Duration: 4 weeks (2 – 4 hours weekly), self-paced according to your time.

Level: Beginner.

Accounting Data Analytics Specialization

About this course

This course teaches you about the analytic mindset and knowledge of the tools and techniques put to use. In addition, this course develops your skills by introducing you to data presentation, visualisation, and other basics using Excel.

In this course, you get to improve your skills and techniques in machine learning algorithms through Python. This will involve regression, text analysis, model optimisation, clustering, and time series analysis.

After this course, you can articulate the process of the CRISP-DM framework, data visualisation, and data preparation. For instance, at the end of the course, you will be able to predict the process of loans and construct a portfolio.

Why is this course good?

• You will know how to use software to create and run Python code. 
• It teaches you how to run and interpret basic data analytic tasks with Python.
• It trains you on how to make accurate accounting Data analytics in large corporations.

Who this course is for:

• Individuals wanting to learn exploratory data analysis, data preparation, and Python programming about finance.
• Accounting students that want to broaden their knowledge.

Course offered by: 

• Coursera.
• The University of Illinois.

Duration: 7 months (including flexible scheduling) with suggested 5 hours weekly classes.

Level: Intermediate.

Entrepreneurial Finance: Innovation and Strategy Specialisation

About this course

This Coursera course provides you with an opportunity to learn how to advance business innovations for your company. The first lesson will show how to evaluate entrepreneurial ventures involving high-growth startups with Excel. 

The next lesson in this course will focus on how you can manage any startups financing strategy – showing how to build capitalisation tables in Excel. You will also learn analysis of blockchain technologies about Excel.

Finally, you will learn how to use and apply R programming to calculate a stock portfolio’s return and market risk. 

Why is this course good?

• Teaches you how to build capitalisation tables in Excel.
• It shows you ways of identifying opportunities to use blockchain.
• Use of R programming to calculate a stock portfolio’s return.

Who this course for:

• Professionals that are interested in Fuqua’s master’s program.
• Finance students looking to learn about capitalisation tables using Excel.

Course offered by:

• Duke University
• Coursera

Duration: 4 months (3hours weekly), assignments, and projects.

Level: Intermediate.

Advanced Excel Formulas and Functions Course

About this course

This course is an advanced tutor format on how to use Excel to perform advanced finance functions. This course covers Autosum, Vlookup, Hlookup, Transpose, Countblank, and Rank functions.

Students who are new to how Excel operates and functions will find it difficult to cope in this course. However, this course will be a good idea for auditors, accountants, information clerks, and financial analysts. 

Why is this course good?

• It helps Excel users to understand the program better.
• Teaches students how to use different functions in Excel.
• This course shows you how to differentiate between absolute, relative, and mixed references.

Who this course for:

• Anyone who works using Excel for extracting and entering data.
• Sales manager, accountants, financial analysts, auditor, and information clerk.

Course offered by:

• Udemy

Duration: 4 – 6 hours (2 hours on-demand video, 17 downloadable resources, 1 article).

Level: Advanced.

Excel Power Tools for Data Analysis

About this course

This course introduces Power Pivot, BI, and Query to intermediate learners – tools for analysing, transforming, and presenting data. You will learn ways to use Power Query to automate the importation and presentation of data for analysis. 

In addition, you will see how to apply Power Pivot in revolutionising the actual analysis process with an analytical database in an Excel workbook. 

This course teaches best when coupled with knowledge from Excel Fundamentals for Data Analysis and Visualization. The final lesson will focus on Power BI, which allows you to create interactive reports and dashboards with Excel.

Why is this course good?

• Teaches Power tools in Excel to Data analysts.
• Allows the students to learn how to create financial reports and dashboards with Excel.
• Understanding of Power Query usage and implementation in full.

Who this course for:

• Data analysts looking to improve their Excel usage.
• Anyone interested in learning about Excel’s Power Tools.

Course offered by:

• Coursera
• Macquarie University

Duration: 15 hours (practice quizzes, graded assignments, course videos & readings).

Level: Intermediate.

 Excel VBA for Finance

About this course

This course gives you all the basics of Excel VBA and how it relates to finance professionals. This course begins by informing you on how to create your VBA environment, ways to build custom Formulas, why and when to use VBA.

Excel VBA for Finance teaches you the different ways you can handle exceptions and errors, set up events & automation, and work with arrays. It will use a case study from a multinational company to explore and create custom functions.

Why is this course good?

• You will learn the “when and why” in using VBA in your finance operations.
• It teaches you how to identify coding errors and manage them in your data.
• Build custom formulas in VBA to use in Excel.

Who this course for:

• Anyone interested in learning Excel VBA.
• People looking for carers in investment banking, treasury, sales and trading.
• Finance analysts and accountants wanting to sharpen their VBA skillsets.

Course offered by:

• Udemy
• Corporate Finance Institute

Duration: 4 hours (11 BIDA courses), files, and exams.

Level: Intermediate. 

Microsoft Excel for Accounting and Finance

About this course

This course teaches the key functions required by most Finance and Accounting users when they work with their business data. It will teach functions that include replacing, sorting, summarizing, finding, and analysing data.

In addition, this course for accounting and finance will show you how to bring specific data against specific row parameters from different excel sheets.

Why is this course good?

• It changes the way it works and saves hours spent on complex calculations in Excel.
• Efficiently calculates the needed values for analysis and decisions.
• It helps potential investors to understand finance-related matters.

Who this course for:

• Accounting professionals.
• Finance and accounting students.
• Aspiring financial analysts.
• Business owners with knowledge in finance.

Course offered by:

• Udemy

Duration: 4 hours (2.5 hours on-demand video, 8 downloadable resources)

Level: Advanced.

Conclusion

These courses are available to improve the knowledge and understanding of growing and expert financial analysts, accountants, and investors. 

However, these courses can only help you gain knowledge; you must be willing to engage and understand to become better. Take any of the best eight listed online courses to improve and sharpen your finance skills and knowledge.