Excel formulas

Excel formulas cheat sheet

If you want to become a master of Excel financial analysis and building financial models then you’ve come to the right place.  We’ve built a cheat sheet of the most important Excel formulas and functions required to become a spreadsheet power user.

Below is a written overview of the main formulas for your own self study.  However, if you want a video explanation of the formulas, check out our Free Excel Crash Course.

If you’re already a power user, check out our Advanced Excel Course and learn the most powerful combinations of formulas and functions.

Shortcuts

List of Excel shortcuts – a list of the most important Excel shortcuts to speed up financial modeling.

Dates and time

=EDATE – add a specified number of months to a date in Excel

=EOMONTH – convert a date to the last day of month (i.e. 7/18/2018 to 7/31/2018)

=TODAY – insert and display today’s date in a cell

=YEAR – extract and display the year from a date (i.e. 7/18/2018 to 2018) in Excel

=YEARFRAC – expresses the fraction of a year between two dates (i.e. 1/1/2018 – 3/31/2018 = 0.25)

Convert time to seconds – convert an amount of time to seconds (i.e. 5 minutes to 300 seconds)

Navigation

Go To Special – press F5 and find all cells that are hard-codes, formulas and more. Great for auditing.

Find and Replace – press Ctrl + F and you can changes parts of many formulas at once

Lookup formulas

INDEX MATCH – a combination of lookup functions that are more powerful than VLOOKUP

=VLOOKUP – a lookup function that searches vertically in a table

=HLOOKUP – a lookup function that searches horizontally in a table

=INDEX – a lookup function that searches vertically and horizontally in a table

=MATCH – returns the position of a value in a series

=OFFSET – moves the reference of a cell by the number of rows and/or columns specified

Math functions

=SUM – add the total of a series of numbers

=AVERAGE – calculates the average of a series of numbers

=MEDIAN – returns the median number of a series

=SUMPRODUCT – calculates the weighted average, very useful for financial analysis

=ROUNDDOWN – rounds a number to the specified number of digits

=ROUNDUP – the formula rounds a number to the specific number of digits

AutoSum – a shortcut to quickly sum a series of numbers

Financial formulas

=NPV – calculates the net present value of cash flows based on a discount rate

=XNPV – calculate the NPV f cash flows based on a discount rate and specific dates

=IRR – this formula calculates the internal rate of return (discount rate that sets the NPV to zero)

=XIRR – calculates the internal rate of return (discount rate that sets the NPV to zero) with dates

=YIELD – returns the yield of a security based on maturity, face value, and interest rate

=INTRATE – the interest rate on a fully invested security

=IPMT – this formula returns the interest payments on a debt security

=PMT – this function returns the total payment (debt and interest) on a debt security

=DB – calculates depreciation based on the fixed-declining balance method

=DDB – calculates depreciation based on the double-declining balance method

=SLN – calculates depreciation based on the straight-line method

Conditional functions

=IF – checks if a condition is met and returns a value if yes and if no

=OR – checks if any conditions are met and returns only “TRUE” or “FALSE”

=AND – checks if all conditions are met and returns only “TRUE” or “FALSE”

IF AND – combine IF with AND to have multiple conditions

=IFERROR – if a cell contains an error you can tell Excel to display an alternative result