Excel Formulas for Finance: Free Course

About this course

Develop a more deliberate approach to spreadsheet calculations with this free Excel Formulas for Finance course from Corporate Finance Institute. All eight numbered teaching parts and the preview remain in the classroom. The course focuses on choosing useful functions, organising financial information and checking the result rather than copying formulas without understanding them.

Course at a glance

What you’ll learn

• Use Excel functions to summarise and investigate a financial dataset.
• Compare lookup approaches and handle errors in a transparent way.
• Use date functions and number formats to support readable financial models.
• Understand the purpose of return calculations and the effect of their timing assumptions.

Skills you’ll gain

• Excel formulas
• Financial spreadsheets
• Lookup functions
• Date calculations
• Number formatting
• Formula checking

Course Overview

A reliable workbook makes its assumptions, inputs and calculations understandable. This course introduces functions used to analyse and aggregate information, retrieve values, work with dates and calculate financial results. The value of learning a function is being able to explain when it is appropriate and how you will check it. The full eight-part recorded sequence is retained in teaching order, together with the preview. Features can differ between Excel versions, and separate CFI files, exercises, assessments and later platform revisions are outside this video course.

How to study the course

• Work through the early demonstrations with a small, clearly labelled dataset. Make the expected result explicit before entering a formula.
• When comparing lookup and aggregation techniques, include an example that does not match the usual pattern and inspect how the workbook behaves.
• Treat date and return calculations carefully. Document the timing convention and check a simple case rather than accepting an unexplained output.

Use the searchable classroom lesson list to revisit a specific explanation. Pause after a useful demonstration, reproduce a small example and explain the result in your own words. Keep a short note of what worked, what changed and what you still need to understand before moving on.

Who is this for?

The course suits finance students, analysts and spreadsheet users who want a stronger foundation in practical Excel functions. Experienced users can also use it to review their assumptions and improve how they check a workbook.

Before you start

Basic Excel navigation and arithmetic are helpful. A suitable Excel installation is needed for hands-on practice and is not included with free viewing. Function availability varies by version; financial examples are educational rather than personal investment advice.

Put the lessons into practice

Build a fictional monthly project-cost workbook with dates, categories, suppliers and amounts. Add a summary by category, a lookup for supplier information and a clear date-based view. Include a deliberately missing lookup value and an unusual date to test the workbook’s behaviour. Choose one financial calculation from the lessons and explain its assumptions beside the output. Check several examples manually and write brief instructions so another person can update the workbook without changing its logic.

This optional activity is provided by WikiFree for independent practice. It is not a graded assignment from the instructor. Keep your working notes, check the result against the task you defined and return to the relevant lesson when an assumption or technique is unclear.

Certificate / Assessment

Watching the public videos and using WikiFree progress tracking does not award a certificate, exam voucher, academic credit or instructor assessment. Separate CFI platform assessments, CPE credit and certification requirements are not included in this YouTube edition.

Use your practice output to review what you can now explain and repeat independently. Completion tracking records your study progress; it does not replace an assessed qualification or professional experience.

Frequently asked questions

Provider: Corporate Finance Institute. Videos play from the Corporate Finance Institute channel on YouTube.