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Courses/Finance/Financial Planning

Modeling Profitability and Making Forecasts in Excel

Master Excel's Powerful Tools for Quickly Creating Forecasts and Profitability Models

Created byRob Stephens
4.9
(260 reviews)
BeginnerUpdated Apr 20, 2025
Modeling Profitability and Making Forecasts in Excel

What You'll Learn

check_circleLearn how to create scenarios in Excel to model different possibilities.
check_circleUnderstand how to use Excel's Scenario Manager functionality to create and manage scenarios.
check_circleMaster the techniques for building one-way and two-way data tables to analyze profitability.
check_circleLearn how to leverage Excel's Forecast Sheet functionality for quick and easy forecasting based on past data.

About This Course

Learn to model profitability and make forecasts in Excel, empowering you to make data-driven decisions for your business. This course delves into key Excel functionalities that give you the tools to analyze past data, build robust financial models, and project future profitability outcomes.

  • Workbook Design Fundamentals: Lay the foundation for effective model building by understanding key principles of worksheet model design to reduce errors.
  • Data Tables: Explore the power of data tables for sensitivity analysis. Master the creation of both one-way and two-way data tables, and learn to identify breakeven points and lines.
  • Goal Seek and Solver: Discover the efficiency of Goal Seek and Solver for optimizing your profitability scenarios. Learn how to find breakeven sales volumes, maximize profit by adjusting production levels, and make informed choices between investment options.
  • Scenario Manager: Enhance your modeling by utilizing Scenario Manager, enabling you to create and compare different scenarios with varying assumptions. Explore the utility of the Scenario Summary Report to analyze the impact of these scenarios on your financial outcomes.
  • Statistical Analysis: Explore how Excel’s statistical functions can help you understand your data better. Learn about correlation analysis, normal distribution, and percentile calculations to gain deeper insights from your data.
  • Analysis ToolPak: Enhance your analytical capabilities with the Analysis ToolPak. Discover its features for descriptive statistics, regression analysis, and smoothing techniques like moving averages and exponential smoothing.
  • Forecast Sheet: Unlock the power of Excel's Forecast Sheet functionality to make predictions based on historical data. Learn how to create forecasts with confidence intervals.

This course focuses on ways Excel facilitates profitability analysis and forecasting. You can explore profitability and forecasting concepts in more detail in my other courses.

Your Instructor

Rob Stephens
Rob Stephens

Founder of CFO Perspective

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star4,787 reviews

Rob Stephens is the Founder of CFO Perspective, which provides continuing education courses for CPAs and financial management courses for business advisors and staff. He has been quoted in Forbes, U.S. News and World Report, Bloomberg Businessweek, and many other news sources. He is also the author of Key Performance Indicators and KPI Dashboards. Rob has a 30-year career that includes serving as a CFO, Director of Operations, and SVP of Finance. Rob is an adjunct instructor for the MBA program at Gonzaga University. Rob holds a Masters of Science in Personal Financial Planning and a Graduate Certificate in Financial Therapy from Kansas State University. He received a B.A. in Business Administration from the University of Washington.

Credit Information

Do these courses count toward my professional development requirements?

This portal is provided as a training and development resource for City of Markham employees. Every course is delivered by a qualified subject matter expert or learning organization, is quantifiable in hours, and is verifiable — you receive a documented certificate of completion for every course you finish, stored on LearnFormula indefinitely.

If you hold a professional designation (for example in engineering, accounting, human resources, or law), courses may be counted as professionally relevant, verifiable learning activities toward your continuing professional development. Individual practitioners are responsible for confirming that an activity meets the requirements of their professional body. For questions about the City of Markham's training and development policies, please speak with your people leader or Human Resources.

What Students Are Saying

4.9
Student's Choice
260 reviews

Frequently Asked Questions

We are a registered provider with 327+ associations and regulatory bodies worldwide. We operate across 29 global markets including Canada, the US, Australia, and the UK. Every course page clearly displays its specific accreditations. Upon completion, you receive a professional certificate that can be validated online. Our certificates include all necessary accreditation details, credit hours, and completion dates, and are formatted specifically to meet the submission requirements of most global regulatory bodies.