[thelatebloomer]

I’m prepping for FAR and decided to change my approach slightly for these exams with Excel being implemented into them. I use Excel extensively at work, and I noticed in doing practice problems my ‘stupid mistake’ rate dropped dramatically while using it. It just seems to click in my mind a lot better in spreadsheet form. In past exams I just used the calculator and it seemed to work out, but there were certainly a lot of steps I would do in my head this way. The other thing I noticed is that when I used Excel to write out some basic journal entries, conceptually I was able to work out answers a lot more consistently on the first attempt and sometimes saved time where I would otherwise get ‘stuck’ for a bit. I’m thinking that it could help with sims and very likely with future professional work as well. I recognize that speed of use has to be a huge priority and accuracy is not the only factor. I will be monitoring my speed to make sure it’s worth it. My strategy is to be doing all my practice problems with Excel to improve quickness of setups and calculations. I’m also taking a bit more time with this one to improve my pass rate because I’m restarting the 18-month window.

Is there an extensive list of the formulas and functionalities for this exam version? I’m not satisfied with ‘most of the basic formulas’ because there are some formulas like PV() that I would like to practice with and some would construe those as ‘basic’. I want to ensure what I practice will be available in that version before I continue.

[CPAHOPE]

For excel, you dont need to know the formulas. You just need to know how to add and subtract in excel. Lol
I found excel to be extremely helpful when i had to add or subtract extensively.
To add in excel: input =3+5 , then it would give you the answer.

[thelatebloomer]

Thanks. Upon review, I think it's clear that there's no need for PV() considering they will always give you the PV factors. I find the biggest utility is setting up quick T-accounts, journal entries, as well as quickly putting the relevant numbers in cells as you read the problem for even faster calculations. That way, you can just grab the cell references as soon as you finish the problem. I feel like that helps my brain prune the relevant data from the problem and not getting lost in blocks of text.

[Author]

Replies