Introduction to Financial Modeling - For Free Course Udemy

Learn to build a simple integrated financial statement model.

Summary

The course “Learn to Build a Simple Integrated Financial Statement Model” is designed to teach participants how to create a fully integrated financial model using historical income statement and balance sheet data. This course is ideal for students, investment banking analysts, and entrepreneurs who are new to financial modeling. A basic familiarity with Excel is required to follow along.

Course Structure:

Section 1: Introduces the accounting equation and the three primary financial statements: balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement. Each statement is explained in separate videos, emphasizing their interrelationships and relevance in building financial models. This section aims to provide a foundational understanding necessary for creating integrated financial statements.

Section 2: Focuses on integrating the financial statements and projecting five years into the future. The first video provides an overview of the modeling process, broken down into manageable steps. The second video, which is 35 minutes long, walks through the detailed process of building the model step-by-step. Viewers are encouraged to download the Excel template and build the model alongside the video for hands-on learning. This section also covers common issues such as circular references and how to resolve them, ensuring the model balances correctly.

The course is delivered through video instructions, with notes available in PDF format. The content is practical and encourages active participation by building the model in real-time. The instructor also offers support through email for feedback and questions.

Course Content:

Introductory Video (2:31)
The Accounting Equation (7:59)
Balance Sheet (7:59)
Income Statement (8:32)
Cash Flow Statement (6:27)
Overview of the Process (4:29)
Building the Model (35:04)
Broken Models & Circular References (4:47)

In summary, the course provides a comprehensive guide to understanding and creating integrated financial statement models, focusing on practical application and resolving common issues encountered in financial modeling.

What You’ll Learn

Learn to build a simple financial model.
Understand how the three primary financial statements relate to each other.

Requirements

Familiarity with excel

Description

This course will teach you how to use two years of historical income statement data and two years of historical balance sheet data to build a fully integrated financial statement model. It is designed for those new to financial models.

Section 1 will introduce the accounting equation and the three primary financial statements in the context of building a financial model. The content starts with the accounting equation, which is the single most important concept in accounting. The remaining three videos introduce the financial statements one at a time with a focus on the relationships that are important as you build financial models.

All of the material is provided via video-driven instruction with notes in pdf format to help follow along.

Section 2 will walk through integrating the three primary financial statements and creating a five-year projection. The first video provides a quick overview of the process. It is an easier process to grasp if thought of as a series of steps. It will also make it easier to measure progress as you work through the longer video. The video in Lecture 2 will walk you through the process of building the model cell by cell.

Because you are walking through the entire process of building a model, the video in Lecture 2 runs long: 35 minutes total. My advice would be to download the excel template attached to this lecture and build the model as the video progresses. Building the model yourself is the best way to fully understand the process.

In my opinion, if you want to build a strong financial modeling skill set, a thorough understanding of how an integrated financial statement model works is one of the most important things you can learn.

The last video in this section will explain circular references and how to fix broken models. It can be incredibly frustrating to finish a model and realize that it does not “balance.” This video will help avoid that frustration.

I hope the content is useful to you! Please feel free to email me (peter@ASimpleModel.com) with any feedback.

Note: The longer video has some white noise in the background that I am having edited out. I hope to have a cleaner audio file up soon. Thanks for your patience!