Error Checking Financial Models in Excel

In reality, more time is wasted trying to find out why your model does not balance than the time you took to build it in the first place.
This session focuses on useful tips and tricks that can be used to interrogate the data in financial models and useful methods for finding errors quickly. It will also provide tips and tricks to reduce your error rate in the first place.

• Understanding the keys to integrity and efficiency in modeling
• The importance of matrix integrity
• Building copyable formulae where possible
• Sanity checking
• Stress testing
• Using Excel tools to help with integrity checking
• Finding unidentified hard numbers quickly and easily
• Using Excel's "Jump tool" to trace through formulae with ease
• Using Excel to show the formulae underlying output
• Using Excel to find inconsistencies in the model
• Using Excel's auditing tool to trace formulae
• Dealing with circular references
• Sorting out model "blow – ups" caused by iteration and circularities
• Protecting the model from "blow – ups" using IFISERROR and circularity switches
• Using Excel's circular reference toolbar
• Error diagnostics
• Using a series of models with one error in each, we will go through the most time efficient process for error diagnosis
• We will give the group a full model with many errors and using the "BS check" method to quickly find the reasons why the balance sheet is not balancing