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F1F9 financial modelling courses now live and online

Our Live online tuition courses are typically delivered over 12 one-hour live, interactive sessions. We timetable them over a number of days to give you time to absorb and revisit the tutorials, undertake assignments and consume targeted video content. Your tutor teaches you as part of a small...

Training

5 reasons to invest time in your basic Excel skills

I meet lots of people on F1F9 training courses who are looking to improve their financial modelling skills. Some have excellent knowledge and abilities when it comes to operating Excel: it is obvious that they have put in the practice. Others struggle. There are plenty of other skills-based activities in life where time spent acquiring the basics can open up endless possibilities - so here are five reasons why you should invest time in your basic Excel skills.

Training

Simplifying renewable energy models

While the news often paints a gloomy picture - the Amazon is burning and Germany is struggling to make the economic and social transition away from brown coal - there are plenty of reasons to cheer when one reads the degree to which renewables are providing ever more of world’s energy. This year, the UK has seen weeks where coal has played no part in the energy supply for the first time since 1882. In my eyes there’s an inherent beauty in renewables projects, a beauty drawn from their simplicity - the sun shines; the wind blows and from that we get energy. Conversely, we’ve come across financial models underpinning such projects whose complexity defies the very simplicity of what they are seeking to quantify. Read more...

Build

Modelling best practice – actions speak louder than words

There’s no shortage of blogs, articles and opinion pieces on how we should go about building a financial model, but they only really scratch the surface and need some imagination to go from principles to practicality. That’s why we’ve put together an example model to share with anyone who’s interested in taking a look.

Build, Review, Support, Training

F1F9: a local presence in Dubai, GCC and beyond

We are pleased to confirm our presence in the Gulf with a team based in Dubai. Our full range of services will be available across the region: training, model build, and model review / risk management. The Dubai office will be led by Omar Shaker who has recently joined our senior team.

Build, Training

Deliverable Management Information Systems

Why did substantive changes to the MS Excel spreadsheet end 20 years ago? Not even a simple tweak to the LOOKUP function to allow exact-match with a FALSE argument? That on its own would unify a batch of sub-optimal approaches available through all the alternatives, with INDEX/MATCH combinations...

Build, Training

Charting new territories with FAST

In my experience making a good model requires you to spend time not modelling, but talking about it instead. With my immediate team, I can talk in front of the monitor with the model on it. But other project members do not talk in columns and rows; they prefer to talk with pictures. Pictures mean...

Build, Support, Training

Average Internal Rate of Return (AIRR)

An introduction by F1F9: We were approached by Thierry Renard and Carlo Alberto Magni and were intrigued by what they had to say: a new approach to calculating an internal rate of return. What's more, they were illustrating the application of the Average Internal Rate of Return ("AIRR") using Excel...

Build, Review, Support, Training

Monitor parts of your Excel workbook without leaving your current view

How do I know what is going on in my kitchen when I am upstairs in my bedroom? If that's a question that is a concern to you, then you might have considered some sort of surveillance device. A web cam, perhaps. Such a device exists in Excel – designed to answer the question: "how do I know...

Build, Review, Support, Training

Use Excel – and be confident that you are using it well

It’s always interesting to pass the time with a fellow traveller on a long-haul flight. In this instance, I was on a regular trip to New Delhi to visit F1F9’s head office. My neighbour was the head of internal audit for a FTSE 100 company. We talked about Excel, of course, and how a business...

Build, Review, Support, Training

Additional keyboard shortcuts to increase your productivity

We are launching a new version of F1F9’s keyboard shortcuts. You will find them available to download in an Excel workbook just below.The shortcuts are stored as macros in the workbook. On opening the workbook, you may need to click on “Enable Content” or “Enable Macros” to make sure things run properly.

Build, Review, Support

Standardised Modelling – Behavioural change is always hard

“If you want to make enemies, try to change something” Woodrow Wilson Despite what we modelling geeks might like to think, people are both rational and emotional. Which makes standardised modelling practices difficult to implement. Our ebook 'How to Standardise Modelling' helps modellers...

Build, Review, Support, Training

How to Model Balances in Excel

There are two basic types of line item in financial models – flows and balances. Balances are amounts at a point in time. Balances can be financial or non financial. Every balance has similar properties. This blog explains what those properties are, and gives a standard model component that...

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