By Eric Weinstein, author of Labyrinth Learning’s Excel for Accounting and Payroll Accounting
Tag Archives: Excel course materials
Reap the Benefits of the Excel 2013 CourseCARD
Microsoft Excel has in record time become one of the most popular programs in both the corporate and small business world, as well as for home use. However, beginners experience moments of panic when delving into the inner workings of this versatile application.
Excel offers thousands of features so creating a system of understanding how to add onto the quick access toolbar, what a ribbon is and remembering keyboard shortcuts is vital to the overall success of learning Microsoft Excel.
That is why Labyrinth Learning is pleased to offer Microsoft Excel 2013 CourseCARD. Instead of students laboring over physical note taking, frequently distracting them from the next topic being introduced, our Microsoft Excel 2013 CourseCARD provides students with a quick and easy to understand reference guide.
More than just a step by step list that students follow to solve a problem, CourseCARD explains how Excel functions and details the necessary features and tools so each worksheet can operate properly. There are also basic and advanced topic sections along with a top productivity tips and solutions page.
The basic topic section includes tips on entering information, formulating data and managing worksheets, while the more advanced section discusses some of Excel’s newer features, including sparklines and PivotChart field buttons. The solutions page is a quick reference guide on customizing methods, creating specialized templates and worksheets and how to open older versions of Excel.
For information about our additional teaching aids, please contact us at Labyrinth Learning today.
Prepare Students for Your Course with The ABC’s of Accounting
Accounting for beginners can be intimidating. However, our basic accounting course can easily reduce much of the stress and worry students often experience when learning something new.
The ABC’s of Accounting has been an excellent resource for students in years past, and now we are offering our newest textbook, Accounting Basics: An Introduction for Non-Accounting Majors. Just as with the first course, this textbook includes coverage of accounting practices including a standard accounting cycle.
Since this course is designed to teach basic accounting practices to students not working toward an accounting degree, the pace is slower and fewer in-depth topics are reviewed. The accounting cycle is initially introduced as an overview so students can get a general idea of what responsibilities a typical company accountant handles on a daily basis.
Our accounting for beginners course provides clear concise examples immediately after each new subject is introduced, giving students additional visual teaching tools. Plus, there is additional dialogue to ensure students not only understand how to perform a particular accounting procedure but the reasons behind the process.
The same fictional company is used throughout the course and each chapter includes two practice sets, an end of the chapter problem building off the previous chapter’s problem, and a wide range of all-inclusive learning projects so each student can begin to apply them to real-time scenarios.
Labyrinth Learning offers excellent interactive teaching tools for all levels of accounting instruction. Please contact us for additional assistance and product availability.
Effective Ways to Help Students Understand Accounting
It’s important to teach certain subjects, such as accounting, in a way that students both comprehend and retain the information. Here are some helpful tips on how to teach accounting:
- If you mention accounting classes to students, you may see their eyes glaze over. Incorporating fun and unusual teaching methods makes the class interesting and also increases the likelihood students will actually remember the basics
- Allow the students to separate into groups and play Monopoly. At the end of the game, have each team prepare an Income Statement and Balance Sheet. Understanding the objective at the beginning of the game can help them connect the causes and effects.
- Incorporate numerous step-by-step examples. Over 85 percent of accounting students surveyed all agreed that this is one of the most effective ways of learning a detail oriented subject.
- When understanding how to teach accounting, it is vitally important to remember to explain why something is being done. Students need to be told the reasons behind certain procedures for the entire process to make sense.
- These days, many students have no concept of how a checking account operates. An accounting class is a wonderful way to teach students the tips and tricks of on-line banking, account balancing, and writing a check.
When learning how to teach accounting, Labyrinth Learning offers an excellent variety of both textbooks and online teaching tools to help both you and your students succeed. Please contact us today for assistance.
Speed Up Your Work With These Simple Excel Tricks
If it has been a while since you attended a brush-up course on Microsoft Excel, you’ll know this feeling; you leave the seminar inspired. You can’t wait to get to work and use the new tricks at work, but over the course of a few weeks, you’re lucky if three or four of the new shortcuts you learned make it into your daily rotation. Sound familiar?
Here are some simple Microsoft Excel 2013 tricks you can share at your weekly meeting to keep coworkers up to speed.
Select All. Quick keyboard commands can shave seconds, which quickly add up to minutes and hours, off of your everyday computer tasks. [Ctrl]+A can be used to select all of the data in your Excel spreadsheet at one time. It also works in Word and other Windows applications.
Copy/Transfer Formatting. Here’s a trick you’ll really thank us for. The Excel Format Painter Tool is often neglected, but not for long. When you want to transfer the cell formatting (not formula), simply select the cell and right click. See the paint brush in the bottom-right corner? Select it. Then click on any other cell(s) and the identical formatting will be copied.
Display formulas. When you hit [Ctrl] + ~, all of the formulas in a spreadsheet will be visible, allowing you to edit/tweak them as needed.
Labyrinth Learning has a host of Microsoft Excel 2013 products that can teach your employees basic and advanced skills, or can be used for a FastCourse refresher at your next training seminar.
Keyboard Shortcuts Every Excel User Should Know
When you are dealing with a spreadsheet all day, you have to deal with hundreds of calculations, thousands of cells and dozens of pages. Throughout the day clicking through a series of menus and finding the right buttons can add up to a lot of extra time.
Luckily all of your common productivity programs have built in shortcuts to make quick work of your work. Here are just a few Microsoft Excel 2013 keyboard shortcuts that can boost productivity in your workforce.
- [ALT] + ENTER. Insert a new line in a cell. As any introductory student to Excel knows, pressing Enter will take you directly to the next cell, but ALT+ENTER will create a new line within the same same cell.
- [CTRL] + [ ; ] and [CTRL] + [ : ]. Insert the current date and/or time. When you hit the CTRL + Semi-colon and/or CTRL + Colon, the current date and time will appear, respectively. This is significantly faster than alternative formatting methods.
- [F11]. Create a chart. If you want to create a chart from a range of data, simply select the data and hit your F11 key. It’s like magic.
- [SHIFT+F2]. Add a comment to a cell. Wish you could add a comment to a cell quickly? You can when you press the SHIFT, and then the F2 key.
- [CTRL+F2]. Print Preview. This keyboard shortcut works in both Microsoft Excel 2013 and Word, and gives you an instant view of what your sheet will look like if you need to print it out.
Labyrinth Learning offers multiple levels of Excel course materials so your students can utilize efficient, time-saving keyboard shortcuts.