For quotes, stock and money kept in a spreadsheet.
Excel for small business
Price lookups, dropdowns, margins, price changes, sales totals and loan costs, then an invoice, a stock list with low-stock alerts, a budget and an expense report.
The first lesson is free and needs no sign-up.
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The lessons, in order
Each one takes about 11 minutes. Three are free; the rest are in the full course.
- 1
Look up a price with VLOOKUP and XLOOKUP
Free · Confident · 11 min
Bring each order's price over from a price list with VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP, and avoid the missing-FALSE trap.
Start the lesson - 2
Make a dropdown list
Free · Confident · 7 min
Give a column a dropdown of fixed choices, pick from it, and stop anything else from being typed.
Start the lesson - 3
Profit margin and markup
In the full course. Confident · 11 min
Work out markup and profit margin from cost and price, tell them apart, and set a price that hits a target margin.
See the lesson - 4
Percentage increase and decrease
In the full course. Confident · 9 min
Raise or lower prices by a percentage with one formula, and know why the same percentage up and down doesn't cancel out.
See the lesson - 5
SUMIF and COUNTIF
In the full course. Confident · 12 min
Total and count only the rows that match a condition, and copy the formula down without breaking its ranges.
See the lesson - 6
Your first pivot table
Free · Confident · 10 min
Turn 200 rows of sales into totals by region, read the answer, and re-ask the question by rep or product.
Start the lesson - 7
Loan payments with PMT
In the full course. Confident · 10 min
Work out a loan's monthly payment with PMT, convert the annual rate and term to months, and show the payment as a positive amount.
See the lesson - 8
Highlight cells above a value
In the full course. Confident · 8 min
Color every amount above a limit automatically, so the cells that need attention stand out and keep standing out when the numbers change.
See the lesson - 9
Invoice template
In the full course. Confident · 14 min
Build an invoice that looks up each price from a price list and works out line totals, a discount, sales tax and the amount due.
See the lesson - 10
Inventory tracker with low-stock alerts
In the full course. Confident · 14 min
Track stock on hand, flag every item at or below its reorder point in red, count them and work out how much to order.
See the lesson - 11
Build a monthly budget
In the full course. Confident · 14 min
Build a budget that totals your spending by category, shows what's left of each plan and turns red when a category goes over.
See the lesson - 12
Expense report
In the full course. Confident · 13 min
Build an expense report with a category dropdown, totals per category that add up, and a flag on every expense over the policy limit.
See the lesson
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See the pathGet the full course
Every lesson in the Excel course, with new lessons added as they're written.
- All 217 Excel lessons open today, and every new one as it's written.
- The Roadmap, Skills and all eight paths.
- A cheat sheet for every lesson you finish.
- At checkout, add the Google Sheets course for US$49.