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Excel for Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A)

4.7(2,995) on LinkedIn Learning
Advanced 2.6 hours English Course Certificate
SkillsExcelFP&AFinancial modellingDynamic arraysXLOOKUPINDEX/MATCH

Is this course right for you?

Our take
A LinkedIn Learning course that takes Excel past the basics into the techniques FP&A professionals lean on daily.

Good for: Advanced Excel techniques for financial planning and analysis.

Skip if: You are new to Excel or not in a finance/FP&A role.

It covers dynamic tables and arrays and the modern formula toolkit — INDEX, XMATCH, XLOOKUP, OFFSET — which are the building blocks of robust, self-updating financial models rather than brittle one-off spreadsheets. For someone who maintains models others depend on, that shift from manual rebuilds to formulas that update themselves is the whole game.

It's too advanced if you're new to Excel or not in an FP&A-type role, and there's one practical dependency: the dynamic-array formulas need a recent Excel (Microsoft 365), a separate licence from the course. It's on a LinkedIn Learning subscription (usually a free trial first; free through many libraries), with a completion certificate as a learning record (as of 2026).

Comparison · LBS

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About this course

This course goes beyond basic Excel into the techniques FP&A professionals actually use day to day: dynamic data tables, dynamic ranges, and dynamic arrays, paired with modern formulas (INDEX, XMATCH, XLOOKUP, OFFSET, SEQUENCE, FILTER, UNIQUE, SORT, SORTBY) and Power Query applications — part of a broader Professional Certificate from the Corporate Finance Institute.

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Instructor

CS
Carl Seidman
LinkedIn Learning instructor

Carl Seidman is a Microsoft MVP, Professor in Data Analytics at Rice University, and an FP&A and Excel education specialist with 325,000+ LinkedIn Learning followers.

Frequently asked questions

Not really — it applies Excel to financial planning and analysis (FP&A), so it assumes you already know Excel fundamentals (formulas, functions, basic analysis) and have some finance context. It is aimed at finance professionals or those moving into FP&A, showing how to use Excel for budgeting, forecasting, and financial modelling. If Excel is new, learn the basics first; this builds on them for finance work.

Using Excel for financial planning and analysis: building budgets and forecasts, financial modelling, analysing performance and variances, and presenting financial data clearly. It targets the specific Excel techniques FP&A professionals use day to day, so it is more about applying Excel to finance workflows than teaching either Excel or finance from scratch — a practical bridge between the two for people in or entering the role.

A reasonably current version helps, since some techniques may use newer functions, but the core FP&A methods work across recent Excel versions including Microsoft 365. If you are on an older version, most of it still applies, with perhaps a few newer functions unavailable. The concepts — modelling, forecasting, analysis — matter more than the exact version you run.

Not by default — it runs on LinkedIn Learning, which is subscription-based — but a free trial is common, and many public libraries and universities give members full access at no cost. Check whether a library card or an institution you belong to already provides LinkedIn Learning before paying, since that quietly unlocks this course and the whole catalogue.

Yes, you earn a LinkedIn Learning completion certificate for your profile. Treat it as a signal of professional development rather than a formal qualification — FP&A skill is shown by the models and analysis you can actually build. The real value is applying Excel effectively to financial planning, which shows in your work more than the certificate.
Paid
LinkedIn Learning subscription
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