Excel 365: Use Financial Functions

Course description

This course introduces core financial functions in Excel 365 and shows how to apply them to common savings, loan, and projection questions. You’ll start by examining how the time value of money drives the inputs these functions share—rate, number of periods, payment amounts, present value, future value, and payment timing—and how to align those inputs to real scenarios. Using FV, you’ll calculate the value of an investment given a constant rate and periodic contributions, including how to convert annual rates to monthly or quarterly rates and match periods to contributions. With PV, you’ll work backward from a target amount to determine how much money is needed today when periodic deposits and a yield over a fixed term are known. PMT then solves for the periodic deposit required to hit a future target, clarifying how rate and period conversions affect results and how the timing argument changes outcomes. The course then shifts to projecting results from existing data. You’ll use FORECAST to estimate upcoming values for a series and learn a clean setup that places forecasted results in a separate column so charts can clearly distinguish historical and projected data. Next, TREND demonstrates linear modeling that spills into adjacent cells and supports both existing and new x-values for quick what-if analysis. GROWTH provides an exponential alternative, using known_y’s and known_x’s to model compounding patterns over time and to extend forecasts for future periods. Throughout, examples emphasize proper sign conventions for cash flows, the importance of absolute references for reusable formulas, and practical checks to ensure arguments are defined at the same periodicity. By the end, you’ll be able to plan toward savings goals, estimate lump-sum needs, compute required periodic contributions, and build straightforward projections that display clearly in charts—equipping you to make faster, better-informed financial decisions in Excel.

Course outline