Building Financial Models with Microsoft Excel: A Guide for Business Professionals Wiley Finance: Amazon.co.uk: K. Scott Proctor: Books

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A comprehensive guide to building financial models
Building Financial Models with Microsoft Excel + CD–ROM provides beginning or intermediate level computer users with step–by–step instructions on building financial models using Microsoft Excel–the most popular spreadsheet program available. The accompanying CD–ROM contains Excel worksheets that track the course of the book and allow readers to build their own financial models. This comprehensive resource also covers important topics such as the concept of valuation, the concept of sensitivity analysis, the concepts of contribution margin and financial ratios and the basics of building and using a Capitalization Table.
K. Scott Proctor, CFA, is the Director of Investor Analytics at SNL Financial, a financial information provider.

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A financial model is a quantitative representation of a company’s past, present, and future business operations. Companies of all types and sizes use financial models every day to analyze and plan their business activities. Financial models serve as the foundation and basis of standard financial accounting reports, including the balance sheet, the income statement, and the statement of cash flows.

While many business professionals are familiar with the "output" of financial models, namely consolidated financial statements, few are truly adept at building an accurate and effective financial model from the ground up. Building Financial Models with Microsoft Excel addresses this real, immediate, and significant issue like no other book. Written in a straightforward and accessible manner, it is a comprehensive resource for business professionals with a beginner or intermediate level of experience in both Microsoft Excel and finance or accounting.

Building a financial model is a logical, step–by–step process, where each component builds upon or feeds into another component. Building Financial Models with Microsoft Excel–organized to closely follow this process–is divided into three major parts and includes a companion CD–ROM, which contains sample Excel worksheets that allow you to follow the examples illustrated within the book or build your own financial models according to your specific situation.

Part One of Building Financial Models with Microsoft Excel introduces the concepts of budgets and financial models, and covers the steps involved in building the master budget –as well as its two key elements, the operating budget and financial budget. You’ll learn the fundamentals of the budgeting process and how various components of a master budget relate to one another. The master budget template provided in this part of the book serves as a road map for building each individual component of the financial model.

Part Two of this book deals with a company’s consolidated financial statements and free cash flows. It provides you with a guide to building these statements from scratch, based upon the operating and financial budgets of a company. The final part of Building Financial Models with Microsoft Excel–Part Three–deals with several important topics, including: various ways to analyze a financial model; the concept of valuation; and capitalization, or ownership, charts.

Filled with in–depth insights and easy–to–understand instructions, Building Financial Models with Microsoft Excel is a practical guide to understanding and creating fully functioning financial models.

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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

exaggerated claims, this book has limited value 3 Mar 2011

By G meister

Format:Hardcover

This book is little more than a paint by numbers exercise in filling out pre-made excel worksheets. The "questions" at the end of each chapter provide no feedback as to what progress you are making. In addition - there is very little analysis or understanding of the financial models presented to the reader. The author simply regurgitates the superficial aspects of each financial model. I'm very disappointed in this book - it claims to be much more than it is. I'm willing to wager my house on the fact that the professors and various luminaries who provide glowing reports on the back cover did not even read it. I know what I am talking about too - I purchased this book as prep for the MBA programme I am about to start at one of the world's top 10 business schools.

I do NOT recommend this book, not even for beginners.

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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful

Don't Buy It 19 April 2011

By N. Brown

This book tries to teach a method of modelling that breaks best practice in the industry. For example its use of names is stupid and doesn't conform to the single formula per row best practice. The idea that you would put 4 columns of quarterly calculation and then annual calculation next to it on the same row is beyond belief.

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Amazon.com: 7 reviews

55 of 58 people found the following review helpful

Hardly a Guide for any Professional in Finance 27 Sep 2006

By S. Shaikh - Published on Amazon.com

Chances are that if you are even thinking about financial modeling you have at least a basic understanding of excel and accounting. If that is the case, this book will prove to be almost completely useless. The modeling examples used within the book are so simplistic that if you have had half a semester in an accounting class you will have a more indepth understanding than what the book provides. Financial valuation is almost non existant as is sensitivity analysis, with each getting a short token chapter. The use of excel is at such a beginner level that I feel as if I did more indepth work with excel attempting to figure out my student loan payments. I have read the book from front to back and feel as if it has provided me with no useful manner in which to conduct any sort of modeling other than in an imaginary world where companies only sell one product, have almost no expenses, collect all their recievables within the next pay period and other such ludicrious assumptions. In addition there are several errors in the examples provided in the book. These made me chuckle since anyone who could catch them would not need the book and anyone who actually needs the book for its rudimentary "guidance" would be left bewildered and confused as to why they got the answers wrong.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful

goes somewhat beyond introductory Excel 18 Mar 2007

By W Boudville - Published on Amazon.com

The book has some merit to a reader new to Excel, and who wants something a bit more indepth than the Idiots or Dummy's books on Excel. Proctor gives examples that do more with the spreadsheets, and you get to appreciate what Excel can provide.

But, as other reviewers have cogently pointed out, the book really is not for business professionals, despite what the title says. An accountant or businessperson should already have more background on financial modelling with spreadsheets that the level provided here.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful

WAY too Basic for Most 13 Mar 2007

By Joe Bruce - Published on Amazon.com

This work lacks substance for anyone remotely likely to have to do any real financial analysis. The examples are too simplistic to be of much practical value. If you have virtually no training or experience in Excel or accounting or finance then this book might be worth borrowing from a library to get you up to speed. If you have more than a week of experience in this area then it will sit on the shelf.

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Building Financial Models with Microsoft Excel: A Guide for Business Professionals (Wiley Finance) [Hardcover]

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