Tag: Excel

Want to include AI in your accounting course? 24 step-by-step tutorials and more…

Dr. Wendy Tietz, CPA, CMA, CSCA, CGMA5 Comments

AI is transforming how we work—and our students need to be ready to use AI in their future careers. As educators, we have a responsibility to help them understand how to use tools like ChatGPT responsibly and effectively. That means helping them see AI not as a shortcut or cheating aid, but as a tool that improves efficiency and enhances analysis.

Tracie Miller and I chose Excel as the foundation for teaching AI because most students already have a basic comfort level with it, which makes learning AI concepts more accessible. That familiarity makes it easier to focus on how AI can enhance what they’re doing—whether that’s generating complex formulas, cleaning data, or analyzing trends.

To help faculty integrate AI into their classes, we have created a set of free resources that includes:

  • 24 step-by-step tutorial videos showing how to use Excel’s built-in AI features or how to use ChatGPT to leverage use of Excel
  • Assignments for each tutorial, including both hands-on exercises and conceptual essay questions
  • Multiple-choice questions
  • Teaching tips, suggested solutions, and classroom activities like a Kahoot! quiz, crossword, and word search

For example, one of the tutorials included in the free resource package focuses on Excel’s built-in dynamic array formulas. Students are guided step by step through functions like SEQUENCE, UNIQUE, TEXTSPLIT, and TRANSPOSE—all of which allow a single formula to return multiple results that “spill” across rows or columns. The tutorial helps students understand how these formulas work, when to use them, and how AI features in Excel can make data tasks faster and smarter. It’s hands-on and gives students immediate opportunities to apply what they’ve learned in related Excel exercises.

All these materials are designed to make it easy to bring AI into your accounting course in a practical, structured way—whether you’re teaching Excel, accounting, analytics, or any business-related course.

Want access to all the tutorials, assignments, and the full instructor guide?
Click here to request the full AI+Excel resource instructor guide

The request form is quick – please use your school email address. Also – check your spam folder. We send out the instructor guide about once a week and a lot of times it goes to spam – so check your spam folder.

We hope you find the tutorials and related resources helpful.

Have a great day!

Wendy Tietz

New! Hotels and lodging ESG projects for introductory accounting now available

Dr. Wendy Tietz, CPA, CMA, CSCA, CGMALeave a comment
ESG emblem

We are excited to announce that our new set of ESG projects for introductory accounting is now available. In these projects, students first review a quick overview lesson on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) accounting and reporting. Then students are given written ESG reports for three companies within the hotel and lodging industry. All reports are based on real-company metrics. Each report contains data covering one to three years for selected ESG metrics. The student will gather data from each of the reports to build a data set. This data set will be used to build charts to visualize the ESG metrics and trends. The student will then construct dashboards to compare the ESG profiles. Dashboards can focus on environmental, social, and/or governance metrics. The projects combine data gathering, data analysis, and ESG topics.

These projects provide an opportunity to introduce students to ESG reporting and how ESG metrics can add to an analysis of a company’s performance. These projects demonstrate that evaluating a business is more than just crunching the numbers or looking at financial statements. ESG reporting provides an additional lens for reviewing and evaluating a company.

There are a total of nine ESG hotels and lodging independent projects from which to choose:

  1. One online dashboard project (no software needed);
    1. Four Excel projects; and
    1. Three Power BI projects.

All projects include step-by-step tutorial videos, suggested questions, and solutions.

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To request the instructor guide that contains everything you need for all nine projects, please fill out the form at this link. We generally send out instructor guides once a week. Check your spam folder; often our emails go into a spam folder.

30-minute webinar on Excel advanced data cleaning project on Monday, October 3, 1 – 1:30 pm ET

Dr. Wendy Tietz, CPA, CMA, CSCA, CGMA2 Comments

Are you interested in data cleaning and visualization? Want a ready-made project for your class that uses Excel for data cleaning and visualization? We have developed a case that is suitable for intermediate accounting, data analytics, cost accounting, or other accounting major classes that uses Excel – and we provide step-by-step tutorial videos, making it easy to use in your classes.

Join us on Monday, October 3, 1 – 1:30 pm Eastern, for a webinar on “ETL project using advanced Excel featuring KAT Concession Supply.” We will be covering how to request the instructor materials, what the project covers, how you can use it in your own classes, and more!

We will also answer any questions you have. The webinar is from 1 – 1:30 pm Eastern – you can register for this webinar at this link.

To see all the webinars we have scheduled, see our website webinar page at this link.

New! Intermediate Data Cleaning (ETL) & Analytics Project for Excel: KAT Concession Supply

Dr. Wendy Tietz, CPA, CMA, CSCA, CGMALeave a comment

This project is one of ten projects in a set that focus on data cleaning and analytics. Read on for how to request this intermediate level project for introductory accounting that uses Excel for data cleaning and analytics.

A key step in data analytics is getting the data ready for use – in fact, this step can take more time and effort than the analysis of the data. This brand-new Excel project focuses on the data cleaning aspect of data analytics and is appropriate for introductory accounting – but could be adapted to any accounting class.

KAT Concession Supply is a fictitious company that supplies food, paper products, and other items to fairs, amusement parks, and other organizations. Information in the KAT Concession Supply data sets includes information about its sales over a three-year period. The data from KAT Concession Supply has errors and irregularities in it and it must be cleaned so that an interactive dashboard about its operations can be prepared. This Excel project is classified as intermediate because it takes about an hour to complete the entire project – the Excel is still doable for the introductory accounting student.

Complete step-by-step tutorial videos and an instructor guide are available to make project adoption easy and painless in accounting courses. The project is available at no cost for instructors to use in their classes.

Intermediate project for Excel

The data cleaning and other tasks in the Intermediate version of the Excel data cleaning project are:

  • Widen all columns to automatically fit the contents.
  • Find and remove duplicate records.
  • Remove spaces and nonprinting characters.
  • Convert dates stored as text to date format.
  • Find and replace text.
  • Split one column into two.
  • Change the case of cells.
  • Combine cells.
  • Convert text into numbers or currency.
  • Format numbers.
  • Correct spelling.
  • Create a three-visualization dashboard.

Tutorial videos/PDFs

Complete step-by-step instructions are provided for this project. Students have the choice of viewing the tutorial videos or downloading a pdf file of the annotated slides. The tutorials for this project have been split into several shorter parts. The project can be completed in shorter steps, rather than the entire project in one sitting.

***You can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Concession Supply intermediate data cleaning project for Excel by requesting it at this link.***

The instructor guide contains the data set, solutions, and other information. The instructor guide also contains all the KATCS data cleaning projects released to date.

Give us about 5 – 8 days to respond – but check your Spam folder for the email if you do not see our email within that approximate time frame. (You may want to add drwendytietz@gmail.com to your Safe Senders list. Please don’t email to that email address – that is an email address used solely for distributing the project resources we have developed. Thank you!)

New! Beginning Data Cleaning (ETL) & Analytics Project for Alteryx: KAT Concession Supply

Tracie Miller-NoblesLeave a comment

This is the second of ten projects in a set that focus on data cleaning and analytics! Read on for how to request this first beginning level project that uses Alteryx for data cleaning and analytics.

Image of opening slide of Alteryx Beginner project.

A key step in data analytics is getting the data ready for use – in fact, this step can take more time and effort than the analysis of the data. This brand-new Alteryx project focuses on the data cleaning aspect of data analytics and is appropriate for introductory accounting – but could be adapted to any accounting class.

KAT Concession Supply is a fictitious company that supplies food, paper products, and other items to fairs, amusement parks, and other organizations. Information in the KAT Concession Supply data sets includes information about its sales over a three-year period. The data from KAT Concession Supply has errors and irregularities in it and it must be cleaned so that an interactive dashboard about its operations can be prepared. This Alteryx project is classified as beginner because it takes less than an hour to complete the entire project and the Alteryx steps are pretty basic.

Complete step-by-step tutorial videos and an instructor guide are available to make project adoption easy and painless in accounting courses. The project is available at no cost for instructors to use in their classes.

Beginner project for Alteryx

The data cleaning and other tasks in the beginner version of the Alteryx data cleaning project are:

  1. Input and view data
  2. Identify and remove duplicate records
  3. Remove unwanted characters such as spaces and nonprintable characters from fields
  4. Convert dates stored as text to fields formatted as dates
  5. Find and replace text with replacement text
  6. Split one field into two fields
  7. Remove empty columns and rename columns
  8. Save new file to Excel
  9. Correct spelling errors in Excel
  10. Create a two-visualization interactive dashboard

Tutorial videos/PDFs

Complete step-by-step instructions are provided for this project. Students have the choice of viewing the tutorial videos or downloading a pdf file of the annotated slides. The tutorials for this project have been split into two parts. You can view the tutorial videos here as a preview of this project:

  1. Part 1: Data cleaning tutorial (video | pdf)
  2. Part 2: Dashboard tutorial (video | pdf)

***You can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Concession Supply beginning data cleaning project for Excel and Alteryx by requesting it at this link.*** The instructor guide contains the data set, solutions, and other information.

Give us about 5 – 8 days to respond – but check your Spam folder for the email if you do not see our email within that approximate time frame. (You may want to add drwendytietz@gmail.com to your Safe Senders list. Please don’t email to that email address – that is an email address used solely for distributing the project resources we have developed. Thank you!)

News flash: This data cleaning project is the second project in a set of ten data cleaning and visualization projects developed by Wendy Tietz, Jennifer Cainas, and me. We will be releasing new projects approximately twice a month for the remainder of 2022. These projects will be available in three levels: Beginner (five data cleaning techniques plus two-visualization dashboard); Intermediate (beginner steps with seven additional data cleaning techniques plus three-visualization dashboard); and Advanced (intermediate steps with additional data cleaning techniques plus four-visualization dashboard.) In addition, the projects will be available in four software tool combinations: Excel, Google Sheets, Tableau Prep combined with Tableau, and Alteryx combined with Power BI.

New! Beginning Data Cleaning (ETL) & Analytics Project for Excel: KAT Concession Supply

Dr. Wendy Tietz, CPA, CMA, CSCA, CGMALeave a comment

We are super excited to share the first of ten projects in a set that focus on data cleaning and analytics! Read on for how to request this first beginning level project that uses Excel for data cleaning and analytics.

A key step in data analytics is getting the data ready for use – in fact, this step can take more time and effort than the analysis of the data. This brand-new Excel project focuses on the data cleaning aspect of data analytics and is appropriate for introductory accounting – but could be adapted to any accounting class.

KAT Concession Supply is a fictitious company that supplies food, paper products, and other items to fairs, amusement parks, and other organizations. Information in the KAT Concession Supply data sets includes information about its sales over a three-year period. The data from KAT Concession Supply has errors and irregularities in it and it must be cleaned so that an interactive dashboard about its operations can be prepared. This Excel project is classified as beginner because it takes less than an hour to complete the entire project and the Excel steps are pretty basic.

Complete step-by-step tutorial videos and an instructor guide are available to make project adoption easy and painless in accounting courses. The project is available at no cost for instructors to use in their classes.

Beginner project for Excel

The data cleaning and other tasks in the beginner version of the Excel data cleaning project are:

  1. Widen all columns to automatically fit the contents
  2. Find and remove duplicate records
  3. Remove unwanted characters such as numbers, spaces, and nonprintable characters from fields
  4. Find and replace text with replacement text
  5. Change the case of a text field to uppercase or lowercase
  6. Format numbers
  7. Create a two-visualization interactive dashboard

Tutorial videos/PDFs

Complete step-by-step instructions are provided for this project. Students have the choice of viewing the tutorial videos or downloading a pdf file of the annotated slides. The tutorials for this project have been split into two parts. You can view the tutorial videos here as a preview of this project:

  1. Part 1: Data cleaning tutorial (video | pdf)
  2. Part 2: Dashboard tutorial (video | pdf)

***You can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Concession Supply beginning data cleaning project for Excel by requesting it at this link.*** The instructor guide contains the data set, solutions, and other information.

Give us about 5 – 8 days to respond – but check your Spam folder for the email if you do not see our email within that approximate time frame. (You may want to add drwendytietz@gmail.com to your Safe Senders list. Please don’t email to that email address – that is an email address used solely for distributing the project resources we have developed. Thank you!)

News flash: This data cleaning project is the first project in a set of ten data cleaning and visualization projects developed by Tracie Miller-Nobles, Jennifer Cainas, and me. We will be releasing new projects approximately twice a month for the remainder of 2022. These projects will be available in three levels: Beginner (five data cleaning techniques plus two-visualization dashboard); Intermediate (beginner steps with seven additional data cleaning techniques plus three-visualization dashboard); and Advanced (intermediate steps with additional data cleaning techniques plus four-visualization dashboard.) In addition, the projects will be available in four software tool combinations: Excel, Google Sheets, Tableau Prep combined with Tableau, and Alteryx combined with Power BI.

Case FA-4300 Excel: Job cost analysis for Ivy Corporation

Dr. Wendy Tietz, CPA, CMA, CSCA, CGMALeave a comment

In this case, students use a variety of pivot tables in Excel to summarize, sort, and aggregate more than 4,800 job cost records. All work is performed in Excel. This case is suitable for assignment after job costing been covered in managerial accounting. You can view this case at this link (this is the same link that you will use to assign to your students.)

Screenshot of Excel

To assign the case to your students, give them this link. All student instructions are included at that link – as are links for tutorial videos for Excel skills needed and accounting concept skills needed.

How to obtain case materials

***You can obtain the teaching notes and solution for the Ivy Corporation Job Cost Analysis Excel case by requesting it at this link.***

You will need to fill out a brief form and then we will verify your instructor status prior to sending you the instructor materials. We generally send the Instructor Guide within a week after the request; we will contact you if we need additional information to verify your instructor status.

Be sure to add drwendytietz@gmail.com to your contacts. Check your spam folder if you have not received the materials from us within a week.

 

KAT Insurance: Data analytics case for introductory financial accounting

Dr. Wendy Tietz, CPA, CMA, CSCA, CGMA1 Comment

The demand for business graduates with data analytics skills has exploded, while the tools and techniques are continuing to evolve and change at a rapid pace. Three of us who teach introductory accounting (Wendy Tietz, Jennifer Cainas, and Tracie Miller-Nobles) have joined forces to develop a case to introduce data analytics in the introductory financial accounting course. This case uses real-life insurance company data that has been anonymized and simplified. The name of the fictitious company analyzed in the case is “KAT Insurance Company.” The case itself is a one-page case and is designed to be able to be completed in 30 – 40 minutes with each software tool (Excel, Power BI, and Tableau.)

This case teaches students how to drill-down into a company’s sales data, gaining a deeper understanding of the company’s sales and how this information can be used for decision-making. Students will use Excel, Power BI, and/or Tableau to analyze the sales transactions for an insurance company. Students will first have to find and correct errors in the data set. Students then will use various techniques to analyze the case. Step-by-step tutorial videos will guide students through the Excel, Power BI, and Tableau portions of the case analysis. This case will introduce the student to data analytics topics including data cleansing, data dictionaries, and data visualizations.

***You can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Financial Accounting case by requesting it at this link.***

Give us about 5 – 8 days to respond – but check your Spam folder for the email if you do not see our email within that approximate time frame. (You may want to add drwendytietz@gmail.com to your Safe Senders list. Please don’t email to that email address – that is an email address used solely for distributing the KAT Insurance resources. Thank you!)

Several resources have been developed for this case to make it easy to integrate into introductory financial accounting courses. Read on for the resources that have been developed and for information on how to request the case and related resources.

What’s included

The following resources are available for this case and are included or linked in the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Financial Accounting case:

  1. Case (one-page Word handout)
  2. Student guide (Word)
  3. General learning objectives for the overall case
  4. Specific learning objectives (related to specifically to Excel, Power BI, and Tableau)
  5. Data sets containing 65,000+ records (4 versions: A, B, C, and D)
  6. 24-record tutorial data set
  7. Step-by-step tutorial video (close captioned)
  8. Scripted tutorial video slides (pdf)
  9. Editable grading rubric (Word document in Appendix A)
  10. Multiple-choice questions with solutions for each of the four data sets Excel solution files
  11. Optional video assignment instructions

How to obtain case materials

***You can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Financial Accounting case by requesting it at this link.***

You will need to fill out a brief form and then we will verify your instructor status prior to sending you the Instructor Guide. We generally send the Instructor Guide within a week after the request; we will contact you if we need additional information to verify your instructor status.

Please add drwendytietz@gmail.com to your contacts so that our email to you does not go to your Spam folder. (Check your spam folder if you do not hear from us within a week of making your request.)

The Instructor Guide contains links to all the resources listed above. We do ask that you not share the Instructor Guide with students. Please do not post the solutions to the case on Blackboard, Canvas, or any other Learning Management System. Also, please do not post the Instructor Guide or the solutions on any web site. (Thank you in advance for helping to maintain the academic useful life of the materials.)

We hope you find value in this data analytics case for introductory financial accounting. Please share any feedback with us about your experiences in using the case. Enjoy! Also, watch for our upcoming KAT Insurance Managerial Accounting case….

Again, you can obtain the Instructor Guide for the KAT Insurance Financial Accounting case by requesting it at this link.

Sincerely,

Wendy M. Tietz, PhD, CPA, CMA, CSCA

Jennifer M. Cainas, DBA, MAcc, CPA

Tracie L. Miller-Nobles, CPA