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Hands-on walkthroughs for reconciling, reporting and automating in Excel with AI — the kind of work you actually do at month-end.
An honest comparison of the leading AI-for-Excel tools — and how to pick the right one for accounting and finance work, from reconciliations to posting back to your ERP.
Read the comparison →A 5-minute walkthrough: match a bank statement to your GL with plain-English prompts, sandboxed Python, and a full audit trail — without leaving your workbook.
Read the guide →The real routes for running ChatGPT inside Excel — the official add-in, =GPT() worksheet functions, Office Scripts and the API — with what each costs and where each breaks.
Read the guide →A diagnostic walkthrough for the missing Copilot button: licence tier, update channel, admin policy, the wrong account, and the desktop, web and Mac differences.
Read the guide →Hide the button, disable the add-in, switch off connected experiences, or remove it organisation-wide — with what each option actually stops, and what it breaks.
Read the guide →What prompt-to-spreadsheet tools actually produce, the failure modes that matter in finance work, and a review checklist before you trust a generated workbook.
Read the guide →Excel artificial intelligence covers five unrelated things — Copilot, Claude for Excel, AI worksheet functions, ledger-connected add-ins and the AI Microsoft shipped years ago. An honest map of each.
Read the guide →Unearned revenue is a liability — here's the proof in a month-by-month Excel rev-rec schedule with the journal entries at each step.
Read the guide →Group and collapse rows in Excel with outline groups and SUBTOTAL to build a P&L that expands on click — shortcuts, nesting and Auto Outline.
Read the guide →Excel stops at 1,048,576 rows — and CSV imports truncate silently. Load a 3-million-row GL anyway with Power Query, the Data Model or Python.
Read the guide →Build a cost-volume-profit chart in Excel: fixed, total-cost and revenue lines with the break-even point labeled, plus a Data Table sensitivity.
Read the guide →Make a double (clustered) bar graph in Excel for budget vs actual: current-UI steps, overlap and gap-width fixes, and clean labeling.
Read the guide →Build a fixed asset register and depreciation schedule in Excel: SLN and DDB per period, NBV walk-down, disposals, and the monthly journal entry.
Read the guide →Refresh a pivot table properly: Table-based sources, refresh-on-open, Refresh All — and the retain-items fix for old months stuck in your filters.
Read the guide →The IRR formula in Excel with a worked capex example, XIRR for real dates, and how to fix the #NUM! error when IRR will not converge.
Read the guide →The NPV formula in Excel, the year-0 off-by-one-period mistake that misstates every project, XNPV for real dates, and when NPV beats IRR.
Read the guide →Four free Excel templates for accountants — P&L, balance sheet, bank reconciliation and close checklist. Real one-click downloads, no signup.
Read the guide →The COGS formula worked in Excel: one inventory dataset through FIFO, LIFO and average cost — three different margins from the same numbers.
Read the guide →Ctrl+5 is the strikethrough shortcut — plus every other method, and a conditional-formatting rule that auto-crosses off cleared or completed items.
Read the guide →How to summarize columns in Excel: turn a raw transaction dump into account-by-month totals with SUMIFS, PivotTables and GROUPBY compared.
Read the guide →Five ways to combine two columns in Excel — with the TEXT() fix for dates turning into serial numbers and account codes losing leading zeros.
Read the guide →Retained earnings formula with real numbers, plus a statement of retained earnings built cell-by-cell in Excel and tied to the balance sheet.
Read the guide →Calculate MoM, YoY, CAGR and AAGR growth rates in Excel on one revenue dataset — and see why a plain AVERAGE overstates your growth every time.
Read the guide →Every real way to use Claude inside Excel in 2026 — official Claude for Excel, add-ins and BYO-subscription routes — compared honestly for finance work.
Read the guide →Freeze header rows, protect totals, and sort a ledger safely. 'Lock rows' means two things in Excel — this guide covers both, with screenshots.
Read the guide →Create Excel drop-down lists for chart-of-accounts pickers, expense categories and status fields — dependent dropdowns and error alerts included.
Read the guide →The percentage formulas accountants use daily in Excel: % of total, % change, margin %, VAT — plus the formatting trap behind 0.45 vs 45%.
Read the guide →Find duplicates before you delete them, dedupe on selected columns, use Power Query for a non-destructive refresh, and catch the duplicate invoices and payments that break a reconciliation.
Read the guide →A free P&L template plus the method: build it from a transaction list with SUMIFS, add prior-period and variance columns, calculate gross and net margin, and avoid the usual cash-vs-accrual mistakes.
Read the guide →A free balance sheet template that tells you when it does not balance, plus where each figure comes from, the usual reasons assets do not equal liabilities plus equity, and the ratios worth adding.
Read the guide →Match 'ABC Corp' to 'ABC Corporation' in Excel: normalise the text first, use wildcards and SEARCH, then Power Query fuzzy merge with a similarity threshold when exact lookups return #N/A.
Read the guide →A free bank reconciliation template with COUNTIFS matching that flags unmatched lines, the standard two-column format, the adjusting journals you need, and how to find the difference when it will not balance.
Read the guide →What the Import Excel and CSV Toolkit contains, which QuickBooks version it is for, how to map fields without failing the import, and what the QuickBooks Online equivalent actually is.
Read the guide →Zoho Books schedules any export over 25,000 records. The documented row cap, what the report-export message really says, the API route into Excel, and the practical workarounds when the export button is not enough.
Read the guide →Get a PDF bank statement into Excel with Get Data from PDF, tell a text PDF from a scan, clean the result into a real table, and validate the extraction before you rely on it.
Read the guide →Build a budget vs actual report in Excel: the variance formulas, the favourable/unfavourable sign convention for expenses, guarding against a zero budget, and flagging only the variances that matter.
Read the guide →A free 20-task month-end close checklist with owners, due days and a progress tracker, plus the close in order - reconciliations, accruals, depreciation, review - and what usually makes it slow.
Read the guide →An honest look at AI in Excel for accountants: ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, formula generators and ledger-connected add-ins compared, with the jobs AI genuinely does well.
Read the guide →Copilot in Excel's real limits for finance work — sensitivity-label blocks, calculation-mode gates and no documented ledger connection — plus a workaround for each.
Read the guide →Microsoft retired the QuickBooks Online connector. Here are the real replacement routes for Excel users — Spreadsheet Sync, ODBC drivers, the API and add-ins — compared honestly.
Read the guide →QuickBooks Online exports static values, not live formulas like Desktop did. How to rebuild a recalculating report with SUMIFS, PivotTables and Power Query.
Read the guide →Export the QuickBooks Online General Ledger to Excel, flatten the grouped layout into a real table, pivot it by account and month, and tie it back to the trial balance.
Read the guide →Import journal entries into QuickBooks Online from Excel: the six required columns, which plans support it, what to do with an IIF file, and how to fix failed imports.
Read the guide →What is a macro in Excel? A plain-English guide to what a macro does, macro vs VBA, when to use one, and how to record your first macro step by step.
Read the guide →How to enable macros in Excel 365 on Windows, safely. Step-by-step for the security bar, Trust Center and Trusted Locations, plus the risks to avoid.
Read the guide →Power Query in Excel automates the copy-paste-clean routine. Learn the Get & Transform workflow, key transforms like unpivot, and how to refresh in one click.
Read the guide →How to merge multiple Excel files into one: 5 methods compared — manual copy, Move/Copy Sheet, Power Query folder, VBA, and AI. Menu paths and when to use each.
Read the guide →A practical guide to Excel for accountants: 12 high-leverage skills — XLOOKUP, PivotTables, Power Query and more — that save real hours every month-end.
Read the guide →Learn how to build a financial model in Excel: a step-by-step 3-statement model with an assumptions tab, clean formatting, and sanity checks that balance.
Read the guide →Excel automation for finance teams: a practical, ROI-ranked guide to what to automate first — reports, imports, reconciliations — from formulas to AI.
Read the guide →Learn how to clean data in Excel with a practical checklist: TRIM and CLEAN, remove duplicates, Text to Columns, Flash Fill, and repeatable Power Query steps.
Read the guide →Learn how to create a macro in Excel three ways — the Macro Recorder, copying a snippet, or AI. Step-by-step for accountants and non-coders, no VBA required.
Read the guide →How to connect QuickBooks to Excel: export, CSV, Power Query, and a two-way add-in that posts invoices and journals back — with approval and an audit log.
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