This course is designed to take users through the process of building the fundamental financial statements in Excel; income statement, balance sheet and cashflow statement.

The statements are built from basics using key assumptions and/or linking related items together e.g. accounts receivable and revenue. Key assumptions and model inputs are made explicit to allow for subsequent scenario building. Once completed, the statements are tied together through the cash movement with error checks being added to reduce mistakes.  

The resulting model, while basic, provides a framework which can be expanded to add more detail, greater complexity, alternative financial structures or any other business specific features that need to be incorporated. Later courses look at some examples to build onto this core course.

An accurate and reliable financial model provides an invaluable tool for planning, budgeting, scenario analysis and predicting future financial performance and is an invaluable skill for many users in the financial function as the logic and comprehension can be applied to many other modeling situations..