Certificate in Financial Modelling in Excel

One model, built properly from a blank workbook. You set up a reusable template, turn a coffee roaster's filed accounts into clean history and sourced assumptions, forecast its profit channel by channel, build the asset, lease, working capital and tax schedules, and link a balance sheet and cash flow that balance in every year. Then you add debt and circular interest, scenarios and a one-page summary, review an inherited model, run the first two years monthly for a lender and test an expansion decision. The capstone is a full model of your own, with a recorded walkthrough.

It's an intermediate course, so you'll want to be comfortable with Excel formulas and able to read a profit and loss account and a balance sheet. If either is new to you, Microsoft Excel and Finance Fundamentals lead straight into it.

You should be comfortable with formulas, absolute references, SUMIFS and a lookup such as XLOOKUP or INDEX MATCH. Everything beyond that, from timeline flags to data tables and circularity switches, is taught as you build.

The Excel desktop app on Windows or Mac, through a paid Microsoft 365 plan or a one-off Excel 2024 licence, because the course uses what-if and auditing tools that Excel for the web and Google Sheets don't have. The lessons show INDEX MATCH alongside XLOOKUP, because inherited models and interview tests still use it.

Financial Modelling if you want to build a linked three-statement forecast, the kind used for funding, big decisions and interview tests. Budgeting & Forecasting if your job is the annual budget, rolling forecasts and explaining variances month by month. They work as a pair, you can take them in either order, and the Financial Analyst Bundle includes both, with Finance Fundamentals.

No. You build everything around a growing coffee roaster, and for the capstone you choose a brief: a real UK listed company forecast from its annual reports, or one of two fictional businesses. A listed company's accounts are free from Companies House and its own website.

Valuation is the next step. This course makes you solid at building the model itself, then Advanced Financial Modelling & Valuation picks up where it ends and adds discounted cash flow, cost of capital and comparable companies.

Yes. Pass the final assessment and you get an OBA certificate of completion that an employer can verify online. It isn't a professional modelling certification or an accountancy qualification. The model you build and talk through is what an interviewer will want to see.

Download the free info pack first. It walks you through every module, what you'll build and what you need before you start, so you can enrol knowing exactly what you're getting. If you'd like to talk it through, get in touch and we'll help you choose.