Five Microsoft Excel Features to Enhance Financial Analysis

Abstract

The Microsoft Excel program contains hundreds of useful features but it can be daunting to identify appropriate applications. In this paper I demonstrate how five features can enhance financial analysis. The features are applied in a capital budgeting context but could also be utilized in other financial contexts including forecasting, valuation and working capital management. The features examined are: the choose function to create scenarios, data validation to restrict selections, data tables for sensitivity analysis, conditional formatting to highlight key results and scenarios under consideration and concatenation to string together text and formula results.