Free Excel & Audit Guides
Excel, finance and audit techniques, each worked through end to end with the formulas written out, plus how to choose a course worth paying for.
Bank Reconciliation in Excel: A Lookup-Based Technique
The XLOOKUP + IFERROR formula, a worked example, and the mistakes that cause false matches.
AR/AP Ageing Analysis in Excel: The 4-Bucket Method
0-30/31-60/61-90/90+ day buckets with SUMIFS, DSO/DPO, and the reconciliation check that catches most mistakes.
Is This Error Material? Audit Materiality Explained
How auditors set overall materiality, performance materiality and a clearly trivial threshold, with a free calculator.
Budget vs Actual Variance Analysis in Excel
Variance amount vs variance %, the red/green convention trap, and a conditional-formatting rule that flags only real exceptions.
Audit Sampling Methods Explained: Picking Items to Test
Why a sample is only as good as its frame, random vs systematic vs targeted selection, and what actually drives sample size.
Building a Monthly MIS Report in Excel
Consolidating sales, variance, ageing and inventory sheets into one summary: cross-sheet references and a written narrative.
How to Write an Audit Working Paper
The five elements every paper needs, and why "checked, no exceptions" fails the standard every paper has to meet.
Designing a One-Page Management Dashboard in Excel
Formula-driven KPIs, shared slicers, a dynamic title formula, and the mistakes that quietly break a dashboard.
Audit Risk Assessment: Building a Risk Register
Business risk vs risk of material misstatement, rating by likelihood and magnitude, and spotting a significant risk.
Inventory Valuation and Stock Analysis in Excel
Stock movement, cost valuation, reorder flagging and turnover: the three questions every inventory sheet should answer.
Audit Walkthroughs and Tests of Controls Explained
Design vs operating effectiveness, segregation of duties, and what a control failure changes in the audit plan.
Automating Data Cleaning with Power Query in Excel
A repeatable pipeline for removing duplicates, splitting columns and fixing dates: recorded once, refreshed in one click.
Capitalize or Expense? An Auditor's Decision Framework
A three-question framework for capital vs revenue expenditure, mid-year depreciation recomputation, and testing in both directions.
Building a Monthly Budget Model in Excel
A Department x Month grid with mixed-reference SUMIFS: the formula that copies correctly across an entire budget grid.
Revenue Cut-Off Testing in an Audit
Why the invoice date never decides the period, testing both sides of the year end, and reading credit notes as evidence.
Building a Finance-Ready Excel Workbook
Sheet structure, the blue/black/green color convention, and Freeze Panes: the habits that make a workbook trustworthy.
Audit Client Acceptance: An Independence Checklist
The four questions before accepting a client, the four independence threats, and how to handle a prior-year red flag.
PivotTables for Sales and Expense Analysis in Excel
Reshape a summary by dragging fields instead of rewriting formulas: rows, columns, date grouping, and calculated fields.
Assessing Receivables Recoverability in an Audit
Why management confidence isn't evidence, sorting evidence for and against a stale balance, and spotting estimate bias.
Auditing Related-Party Transactions: A Finding Framework
How a related party is found in master data, testing arm's-length terms, and telling a disclosure problem from a pricing problem.
Evaluating and Aggregating Audit Misstatements
Why no single error being below materiality doesn't mean the total is fine: direction, nature, and the "just under the line" move.
How Auditors Decide the Type of Opinion
Unmodified, qualified, adverse or disclaimer: the two questions that decide an opinion, and why material and pervasive are never the same thing.
How to Choose an Online Excel or Finance Course in India
A practical buyer’s guide: what actually matters, and what to check before you pay.
Three-Way Match: PO, GRN and Invoice
What each document proves, the three mismatches that cost real money, and the segregation of duties that makes the control work.
TDS on Salary and Form 16
Why salary TDS has no fixed rate, how the annual estimate is spread monthly, and why Form 16 is required even at zero TDS.
Earnings Quality Red Flags: Five Analytical Checks
The operating-cash-flow-to-profit test and four more checks — including why a falling ratio is not automatically a red flag.
Comparable Company Valuation: P/E and EV/EBITDA
How peer multiples work, why the two can tell different stories, and why a discount to peers is a question, not a conclusion.
Bad Debt Provision and the Allowance for Doubtful Debts
Specific write-off vs general provision, the entry for each, and why a provision is used rather than reversed.
Capital vs Revenue Expenditure
The substance test that decides, how the choice moves reported profit, and why a trial balance will never catch this error.
How to Read an Annual Report
Where the information actually lives, which sections are audited and which are not, and why the notes matter most.
Suspense Accounts and Rectifying Entries
When suspense is legitimate, the four errors a balanced trial balance cannot catch, and why you never edit the original entry.
The Cash Conversion Cycle
Receivable, inventory and payable days with formulas, why falling payable days is the worse direction, and what a rising cycle during growth signals.
Depreciation Methods in Practice
The straight-line formula worked end to end, why residual value comes off first, and when reducing balance is the honest choice.
Payroll Gross to Net
Gross salary, net pay and total employer cost are three different correct numbers — and the one most often left out of reported payroll expense.
Inventory Ageing and Slow-Moving Stock
Ageing stock the way receivables are aged, why a provision must be targeted rather than spread, and the holding cost that bites before any write-off.
Input Tax Credit: Conditions and Reversal
How net GST payable is calculated, the four conditions a valid claim must meet, when credit has to be reversed, and why GSTR-2B reconciliation is a real control.
Accruals and Prepayments at Month-End
The matching principle in both directions, the reversal step people skip, and why accruals belong after cut-off in a close checklist.
WACC, Terminal Value and the Enterprise-to-Equity Bridge
Building a discount rate from CAPM, why terminal growth must sit below WACC, and the debt omission that silently inflates value per share.
Reading the Income Statement
The full waterfall from revenue to net profit, what separates EBITDA from EBIT and PBT, and the share-count change that fakes an EPS decline.
Scenario Analysis vs Sensitivity Analysis
Two tools that answer different questions, an upside case built with assumptions moving together, and why one scenario switch beats three spreadsheets.
Provisions and Contingent Liabilities
The three-part recognition test, why "possible" fails where "probable" succeeds, and when an obligation is disclosed in the notes rather than recognised.
The Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement
Why the two sides must agree, the three cash flow sections tied back to the change in cash, and what operating cash flow above net profit actually signals.
Petty Cash and the Imprest System
The replenishment calculation, why the petty cash account itself never moves, and why a ₹100 shortfall is investigated rather than rounded away.
Supplier Master Data and Vendor Risk
The fake-vendor pattern, the three onboarding controls that close it, why a bank-detail change is just as dangerous, and concentration as a separate risk.
TDS on Supplier Payments
A fixed rate rather than an annual estimate, why categories carry different rates, why a one-off supplier is not exempt, and what the Income Tax Act 2025 renumbering changes.
GSTR-1 vs GSTR-3B
What each return reports, which one actually moves the money, why the two must reconcile, and why an invoice missed in GSTR-1 becomes your customer’s problem.
Segregation of Duties and the Fraud Triangle
The one leg of the triangle controls can close, a four-role map across the whole finance function, and what a small team does instead of giving up on it.
The Month-End Close Checklist
Fifteen items across five stages, why the ordering is structural, why skipping cut-off cannot be covered later, and why a close is a time-boxed event.
Designing Internal Controls
The three control categories with real examples, the cost-versus-risk judgement behind each one, and why over-controlling is a design failure too.
E-Invoicing and E-Way Bills
What the IRN certifies, why an invoice without one is not a tax invoice, how the data reaches GSTR-1, and why an e-way bill cannot be generated after the goods move.
Liquidity, Leverage and Interest Coverage
Current and quick ratios, net debt turning negative, interest coverage and its warning zone — and why an unusually high current ratio raises its own question.
How a Share Trade Settles
One buy order through placement, matching, clearing, T+1 settlement and the demat credit — and why matched is not settled when a record date falls in between.
Why Profit Grows Faster Than Revenue
A five-year margin series that locates the real driver, and how flat gross margin rules out pricing power before you look any further.