101PD

Universal · Original 101PD learning guide

Excel for Business: Formulas, Data Cleaning, Analysis, and Dashboards

A practical spreadsheet workflow for reliable tables, formulas, cleanup, analysis, charts, dashboards, and quality checks using realistic business records.

A spreadsheet becomes trustworthy when inputs, calculations, assumptions, exceptions, and outputs can be inspected. The course emphasizes a clean model that another person can audit—not just impressive formatting.

Skills you will practice

  • Table design
  • Formula construction
  • Data cleaning
  • Pivot analysis
  • Dashboard communication
  • Spreadsheet auditing

Prerequisites

  • Access to a modern spreadsheet application; examples use Excel-compatible concepts.

Designed for

Administrative professionals · Operations staff · Managers · Small-business owners

What a learner should be able to do

  1. Outcome 1

    Build clean, filterable source tables with consistent data types.

  2. Outcome 2

    Use formulas and lookups with understandable error handling.

  3. Outcome 3

    Summarize operational data with pivots, charts, and decision-focused measures.

  4. Outcome 4

    Audit a workbook for broken references, hidden assumptions, and inconsistent inputs.

Original curriculum architecture

The final course will expand these modules with original explanations, realistic cases, practice questions, and source review.

Module 1

Reliable workbook foundations

Tables, data types, names, validation, documentation, and version control.

Module 2

Formulas that explain themselves

Logic, lookups, dates, text, aggregation, and safe error handling.

Module 3

Clean and analyze

Duplicates, missing values, transformations, pivots, and exception lists.

Module 4

Communicate the decision

Charts, compact dashboards, accessibility, and management summaries.

Applied portfolio exercise

Operations dashboard workbook

Turn a deliberately messy fictional operations dataset into a clean, auditable workbook and one-page dashboard.

  • Clean source table
  • Calculation sheet
  • Dashboard
  • Quality-control notes

Sources and boundaries

Sources establish current requirements and standards. They do not supply 101PD’s lesson text, scenarios, assessments, or project work.