Excel University Blog
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Jeff Lenning
When it comes to understanding the true cost of borrowing, we can’t afford to rely solely on advertised rates. Terms like APR (Annual Percentage Rate) and APY (Annual Percentage Yield) might seem interchangeable, but they tell very different stories due to compounding. With Excel’s built-in financial functions like NOMINAL, EFFECT, PMT, and RATE, we can…
Understanding how loan payments are structured can feel overwhelming but Excel gives us powerful tools to make these calculations quick and simple. Whether we’re evaluating monthly payments, interest breakdowns, or savings from early payoff, Excel’s financial functions (PMT, IPMT, PPMT, CUMPRINC, CUMIPMT) help us every step of the way. This post is brought to you…
Mastering 5 Key Financial Functions: PMT, PV, FV, NPER, RATE Whether we’re planning to buy a car, save for retirement, or pay off a loan, numbers play a central role in our financial journey. Excel gives us powerful tools to analyze and plan financial scenarios. In this post, we’ll walk through five key Excel financial…
When it comes to evaluating investments in Excel, most people immediately jump to the familiar NPV and IRR functions. While these are incredibly powerful, they can lead to incorrect conclusions if we don’t fully understand how they work, especially when cash flows vary or are irregular. In this post, we’ll walk through six powerful finance…
I’m thrilled to introduce this year’s Excel University Scholarship recipients! These awards are made possible by the generous support of the Excel University Alumni Association. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to make this program a reality for the past 10 years. This was a very competitive scholarship year with many applicants! Thanks to…
Microsoft has just introduced one of the most impactful updates to PivotTables in recent memory: Auto Refresh. If you’ve ever relied heavily on PivotTables for financial reports, dashboards, or data summaries, this new feature is a game changer. In this guide, we’ll walk step-by-step through how to enable and use PivotTable auto refresh in Excel,…
When it comes to evaluating the performance of investment opportunities in Excel, many of us start with the IRR (Internal Rate of Return) function. While helpful, it carries assumptions that don’t always fit real-world situations … especially when financing costs or different reinvestment options are involved. That’s where MIRR (Modified Internal Rate of Return) becomes…
If we need to calculate the internal rate of return (IRR) for a series of cash flows occurring on irregular dates, the standard IRR function in Excel falls short. That’s where XIRR steps in. The XIRR function allows us to incorporate actual dates for each cash flow, offering a more precise and reliable result which…
When evaluating where to invest our money, whether it’s in education, a new business, or a CD, understanding the rate of return is essential. Thankfully, Excel makes this process straightforward with the IRR function, or Internal Rate of Return. This function helps us calculate the annualized rate our cash flows will earn over time. In…
When assessing whether an investment is financially worthwhile, smart investors don’t guess … they measure. Excel has multiple functions that can measure an investment’s net present value. Excel’s classic net present value function, NPV, assumes cash flows occur at regular intervals. But what do we do when the cash flow timing is irregular? That’s where…