The Course

Excel Essentials with Insight Analytics

One course. Two days. Eight modules and a graded capstone that take a team from spreadsheets they're scared to touch, to dashboards leadership actually reads.

2 days · ~10.5 contact hours All skill levels — starts at the basics Certificate at 80%
8Modules
2Days
1Graded Capstone
80%To Certify
Who It's For

Built for managers and the people who report to them

This isn't a certification course for analysts. It's for the manager who receives the spreadsheet and can't tell if it's right, and for the employee who builds it and knows there must be a faster way.

  • No prior Excel needed. It starts at “this is a cell”. Nobody gets left behind.
  • Experienced users still gain. The lookups, PivotTables and dashboard design most self-taught users never formalised.
  • Mixed-ability teams welcome. The workbook lets faster learners run ahead while the room stays together.

Trust the number

Clean a messy export and know the total is right before it reaches the board.

Answer in minutes

Summarise thousands of rows by region, month or rep without writing a formula.

Stop repeating work

Write it once, fill it down, and let the file update itself next month.

Ship it safely

Lock the formulas, protect the sheet, and send a PDF that prints properly.

The Shift

Where your team starts, and where they finish

Eight modules and a graded capstone across two days. Rather than walk you through the syllabus, here is the difference the room walks out with.

Day 1, 9am
  • Doesn’t quite trust the total, and can’t say why
  • Re-types the same report every month
  • Reads #N/A as “the file is broken”
  • Sends the spreadsheet and hopes
Day 2, 3pm
  • Cleans an export in the right order, on a copy
  • Writes it once and lets it update itself
  • Wraps the lookup so it never shows an error
  • Ships a locked, board-ready PDF
What They Learn

The skills they walk out with

Not a feature list — the things they’ll actually do on the Monday after.

Trust the data

Clean a real export in the order that actually works — copy first, text before duplicates, and dates that are genuinely dates.

Calculate without fear

Totals, averages and text that behave when you fill them down — because they finally understand what the dollar signs in $B$1 are for.

Automate the judgement

Encode “flag it if sales are low and satisfaction is low” once, and let the sheet apply it to every row, every month, unasked.

Join data up

Pull a price, a tier or a manager from another sheet with a lookup that doesn’t break the moment someone inserts a column.

Summarise anything

2,500 transactions into revenue by region, by month, by rep — in under a minute, with no formulas at all.

Present and protect

A dashboard that passes the five-second test, locked so inputs stay editable and formulas don’t, printing to one clean landscape page.

The Commitment

Two days your team can actually spare

The course is built in short, focused stretches with proper breaks between them — so people finish the day having learned something rather than having endured something.

The shape of a typical day MorningLate afternoon

Nothing runs long

Each block ends with something finished, not something half-done. The room never has to sit through an hour it stopped following.

Breaks are built in

Coffee mid-morning, a full hour at lunch, another pause in the afternoon. Scheduled from the start, not squeezed in when someone flags.

Hands on the keys

Most of the two days is spent doing rather than watching. The practice workbook is open from the first stretch to the last.

Paced to your group

We adjust as we go. If two days is too much to release at once, we can run a one-day intensive and set the capstone as follow-up work.

Exact timings are agreed with you before the course and shared with delegates on joining.

What's Included

Everyone leaves with the files

Not a slideshow you'll never open again. The workbook and handbook are yours to keep and re-run.

Practice workbook

The seven-sheet .xlsx every module works against — deliberately messy, exactly like real exports.

Course handbook

Every step, shortcut, pro tip and common mistake — searchable, and yours after the session.

Graded capstone

A real Q2 report built from raw data, marked against twelve checkpoint questions.

Certificate

Personalised and branded, issued on passing at 80%. Print or save as PDF.

Three Ways To Run It

Same course. Pick how it reaches your team.

There’s one Excel Essentials — the same eight-module progression and the same graded capstone. What changes is who’s in the room, where it runs, and whose data you practise on.

Public cohort

Book a seat or two on a scheduled date.

  • Best forOne or two people, or trying us out first
  • WhereIn-person, or virtual over Teams
  • Group12 in person · 16 virtual, mixed companies
  • DataOur practice workbook
  • PricedPer seat
Register interest

Tailored to your data

We rebuild the course around your actual reports.

  • Best forTeams who want it to stick, hard
  • WhereYour offices, or virtual
  • GroupYour people only
  • DataYours. Workbook and capstone rebuilt on your exports
  • PricedDay rate + build time
Talk it through

Whichever you pick, nothing is cut. All eight modules, the practice workbook, the graded capstone and the certificate at 80% are in every format. The tailored version simply swaps our messy sample data for yours — which is the single biggest thing you can do to make the training survive contact with Monday.

A team reviewing a finished dashboard together at the end of the course
Day 2, late afternoon — capstones on screen
Before You Begin

What each participant needs

Nothing exotic. If they can open a file and use a mouse, they're ready.

  • Excel 2016 or later. Microsoft 365 recommended but not required.
  • The desktop app. Excel for the web can’t create PivotTables properly, and day two leans on them heavily.
  • Basic computer skills. Opening files, a mouse, a keyboard. That's the bar.
Version notes

We always teach the fallback

A few modern conveniences are version-gated, so nobody is ever stuck:

  • XLOOKUP needs 2021/365 — we teach VLOOKUP and INDEX/MATCH too.
  • IFS needs 2019+ — nested IF works everywhere.
  • Copilot needs a licence — it's an optional bonus, never assessed.
Questions

Before you book

Our team's Excel level is all over the place. Will this work?

That’s the normal case, and it’s what the course is built for. It starts at “this is a cell”, so nobody is embarrassed, but the pace climbs steeply — the logic, lookups and PivotTable stretch on day one is where self-taught users usually discover the gaps in what they picked up on the job.

Because every module is workbook-led, faster participants can run ahead through the steps while the facilitator brings the rest along.

Can you run it at our offices?

Yes. We run in-person, virtual over Teams, or a private on-site cohort for your team only — that's usually the best value from six people up. Get in touch and we'll find a date.

Can you teach it against our own data instead of the practice file?

For private cohorts, yes — and it's the single biggest thing you can do to make the training stick. Send us a representative export and we'll rebuild the practice workbook and the capstone around your actual reports, so people leave having already solved a real problem.

What happens if someone doesn't pass the capstone?

They re-sit. There's no limit on attempts and no penalty — the capstone marks the questions they got wrong and points them back at the module that covers it, so a re-sit is a learning step rather than a punishment. The certificate issues at 80% (10 of 12).

Is the capstone really graded, or is it a formality?

Genuinely graded. The twelve questions can only be answered by reading them off a correctly-built workbook — you can't guess "which region has the highest revenue" without having built the PivotTable. That's deliberate: it means the certificate reflects that someone actually did the work.

How much does it cost?

It depends on the format — public cohort seats, a private on-site day, and a version tailored to your own data are priced differently. Tell us your group size and preferred format below and we'll send exact numbers, within one business day.

Reserve a Seat

Book Excel Essentials for your team

Tell us which cohort suits you, or ask about a private session at your offices. We respond within one business day.

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