Transform your payroll workflow by mastering techniques to clean data, automate complex calculations, and visualize trends for error-free results.
Payroll data is complex, high-stakes, and often prone to nuances that can lead to errors and frustration. In the course "Analyzing Payroll Data in Excel," instructor David Ringstrom, CPA, helps you expand your Excel toolbox to handle these challenges with ease. This course is designed to transform the way you work with payroll spreadsheets, moving you from manual, error-prone processes to efficient, automated analysis. By mastering specific Excel features tailored for payroll professionals, you will learn to clean data, visualize trends, and perform complex calculations with confidence.
The course begins with essential techniques for preparing and cleaning payroll data. You will learn to leverage the AI-based Flash Fill feature to reformat lists and split data into separate columns, while also understanding its limitations. The lessons cover how to use text functions to format numbers and redact sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers, and how to utilize the SUMPRODUCT function to verify payroll totals. You will also navigate the tricky aspects of analyzing dates and times, including solving the common issue of Excel dropping 24-hour periods when totaling hours, and using functions like DATEDIF and NETWORKDAYS.INTL to calculate employee tenure and working days.
Beyond basic calculations, this course explores powerful tools for visualization and budgeting. You will discover how to use Conditional Formatting to create heat maps and highlight salary trends, such as identifying the top 10 salaries. The curriculum demonstrates how to assemble payroll budget elements by converting lists into Excel Tables and utilizing the XLOOKUP function for dynamic data matching. Finally, you will learn to summarize data using Pivot Tables and implement randomization techniques for selecting employees for audits or prizes.
Key learning outcomes include:
CPA, Author, Professional Excel Spreadsheet Trainer and Consultant
David H. Ringstrom, CPA, is the author of Microsoft 365 Excel for Dummies, and a nationally recognized instructor who has taught over 2,500 live webinars. His Excel courses are based on over 30 years of consulting and teaching experience. David’s catchphrase is “Either you work Excel, or it works you,” so he focuses on what he sees users don’t, but should know about Microsoft Excel. His goal is to empower you to use Excel more effectively. David has authored or co-authored 10 books, including Exploring Microsoft Excel's Hidden Treasures, QuickBooks Online for Dummies, and Idiot's Guide to Introductory Accounting.
Provincial regulators of CPAs in Canada do not require that independent providers of CPD be approved to offer courses. Instead, individual CPAs are responsible for assessing whether a CPD activity meets their requirements, and may take activities from any source provided those requirements are met.
Every course offered on LearnFormula is delivered by a qualified subject matter expert or learning organization, and advances learning objectives that are relevant to the responsibilities or professional competencies of Canadian CPAs. All activities on LearnFormula are quantifiable in terms of hours, and are also verifiable, in that users receive documented evidence of their attendance via a certificate of completion after finishing a course (and this certificate is stored by LearnFormula indefinitely). Nearly 100,000 Canadian CPAs successfully satisfy their CPD requirements via LearnFormula on an annual basis.
