Australia’s premier Excel VBA course for finance professionals

A 48-hour Excel short programming course for professionals in the finance & accounting professions looking for better automation & control over important financial information in an increasingly complex environment.

Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) macro programming techniques are taught from the ground up, assuming no prior VBA experience, but familiarity with Excel for modelling and analysis.

Modes of Study

• Classroom mode: 48 hours, usually on six days over one month
• Residential mode: 56 hours, usually on five days over one week, including one-on-one coaching on projects
• Instructor-led Online via Zoom: 48 hours, 12 half-day lessions twice a week over six weeks (evening offerings)
• Instructor-led Online via Zoom: 48 hours, six full-days , twice a week over three weeks

Key Outcomes

• Learn a proven approach for developing automation in Excel-based projects.
• 48 to 56 hours of continuing professional education for accountants and some other professional bodies.
• Gain insights into the development of robust code for routine analytical & reporting tasks.
• Learn effective techniques for importing and validating data.
• Learn how to develop routines from scratch with intent, rather than relying on recorded code or kludging code discovered on the internet.
• Learn how to interact with the user through built-in and custom dialog boxes and VBA functions.
• Understanding of how to add your tools & macros to the Ribbon UI (user interface) and Excel’s own context menus.
• Recognise when it is appropriate to use built-in features & when to add custom functionality.
• Student retains a library of useful routines dealing with common tasks in Excel development, for use in their own future projects.

The Course Delivers

• A thorough grounding in VBA language.
• Familiarity with the VBA integrated development environment.
• Familiarisation with the tools to work with and develop VBA code in Excel.
• An overview of the Excel object model, focusing on critical objects, properties & methods to develop effective, useful & productive code.
• Standardised layout & naming conventions are explained and demonstrated.
• Proven approaches to the development of Excel VBA projects from planning to rollout.
• Effective design approaches for user interface & custom dialog boxes.
• Understanding of the debugging & testing procedures in the VBA development environment.
• Demonstrates how to construct custom functions to extend Excel & reduce complexity in workbooks.
• Demonstrates how to trap and handle errors.

Who Benefits

• Financial modellers looking to automate key tasks in their models, such as Solver, or who wish to develop custom functions to manage spreadsheet complexity.
• Business Analysts responsible for routine forecasting and performance analysis who wish to automate and streamline reporting and analytical tasks, such as the importation of data, data cleansing, and distribution of results.
• Fund accountants & managers in equity & property funds looking to automate reporting, valuation and report distribution tasks.
• Procurement, project planning and logistical staff looking to automate planning and reporting tasks.
• Anyone who uses Excel to perform their role, looking to automate routine tasks, such as data import, data cleaning, workbook distribution, data entry and reconciliation processes.

Benefits for the Employer

• This course provides essential knowledge & design principals to aid staff in creating robust applications in Excel.
• It is designed to replace the commonplace ad hoc recording & copying of VBA code with code robustly designed for its purpose.  Understanding of important issues such as the appropriate use of code and how to avoid common design flaws and inappropriate bypassing of important Excel controls and features is delivered;
• Many managers rightly have concerns about the unmanaged proliferation of macro code within the workbooks in their departments.  If it is developed without clear guidelines & standards and is just kludged-together, then it represents a significant risk.  However, well-designed code appropriately deployed can significantly improve productivity & can add to the control of errors in repetitive and time-sensitive tasks.  Without training this objective is hard to achieve;
• The Financial Analysis VBA Certificate is specifically designed to take knowledgeable Excel users & not only impart essential technical knowledge to enable them to take the next step, but to canvass issues around design, anticipation and trapping of errors and to demonstrate proven techniques that quickly and robustly deliver solutions; and
• Standardisation of approach, coding conventions and the re-use of code is an important outcome.