Financial Reporting Tips & Tricks in Excel (2026 Edition)

RECORDED TRAINING COURSE

Financial reporting continues to involve repetitive workflows and carries ongoing risks of errors and misstatements. In this 2026 webcast, Excel expert David Ringstrom, CPA, will demonstrate how to build and utilize financial reporting templates—both as workbooks and worksheets—that serve as clean, reusable starting points. You’ll also learn how to generate automated financial statements directly from general ledger data using pivot tables, and then refine those reports with Slicer and Timeline filters. Each reporting period, you’ll simply replace the underlying general ledger data, and your Excel-based reports will refresh automatically.

David demonstrates every technique at least twice: first on a PowerPoint slide with numbered instructions, and then live in Microsoft 365 (subscription). During the session, he highlights key differences in perpetual Excel versions (Excel 2021, 2019, 2016, 2013, and earlier). Attendees also receive detailed reference handouts and an Excel workbook containing the majority of the live examples.

Microsoft 365 is a subscription product that receives continuous feature updates—often monthly. In contrast, perpetual license versions of Excel (for example, Excel 2021, 2019, 2016) have fixed feature sets that do not change after installation.

Session Highlights:

• Using Power Query to extract, transform, and load data from text files, accounting systems, and other data sources.
• Adding rows to a blank pivot table to build instant financial reports.
• Applying a consistent style to charts using chart templates.
• Combining VLOOKUP and MATCH to summarize income statement data for waterfall visualizations.
• Enhancing plain number lists with Data Bars conditional formatting.
• Filtering pivot tables with Slicers (Excel 2010 and later).
• Filtering pivot tables by date ranges using the Timeline feature (Excel 2013 and later).
• Reducing pivot table output to show fewer rows/columns for cleaner reporting.
• Visualizing financial statements using the Waterfall chart (Excel 2016 and later).
• Using Icon Sets conditional formatting to provide visual context in financial lists.

Why You Should Attend: 

• This webcast helps you reduce repetitive financial reporting work and minimize errors by using template-driven Excel models.
• You’ll learn how to refresh reports automatically from general ledger data using PivotTables, Slicers, and Timelines.
• The session improves both speed and accuracy in month-end/quarter-end reporting workflows.
• Ideal for finance and accounting users who want cleaner, faster, and more reliable spreadsheet-based financial statements. Accountants.

Who Should Attend:

• Accountants
• CPAs
• CFOs
• Controllers
• Income Tax Preparers
• Enrolled Agents
• Financial Consultants
• IT Professionals
• Auditors
• Human Resource Personnel
• Bookkeepers
• Excel Users
• Marketers
• Government Personnel

Note: You will get access to the Recording link and E-Transcript in your account and at your registered email address.