Finance-Software

This book has good examples that one can use to get up and going with basic to intermediate financial models. If you have to start somewhere, this is certainly it.

This book does what it says it does in the title. It is a hand-on, step-by-step guide to constructing spreadsheet models to assist with decision making. The book guides the reader through intermediate to advanced modelling topics and is written at a level that is accessable to the novice and intermediate user. Advanced users are probably already familiar with the techniques presented.

Someone interested in the tiresome advanced mathematics behind the models should look instead to academic journals . . . someone interested in APPLYING that stuff to something useful should consider this book.

The book provides step-by-step method to guide you to build financial models for your company. Once you understand the basic foundation, you could use the tools to build more complex models.

I highly recommend this book to any aspiring financial analyst. It is definitely worth it, even at the list price.

Want to master the fundamentals of basic finance using Excel? then this is one of the few books on the market that really meet this need. Want to set up more advanced mathmatics modeling? well as the introduction of this explains, this book is more like a cookbook: it lists the required basic ingredients and the culinary process but if you want to spice the dish (financial model) up, it is up to the individuals to dig out those advanced formulas from the financial trade journals and apply them to the models.

I first saw the first edition of this book in my college library. took it home and was EXCITED. I was looking for a practical book that would show me the intricacies of Excel for setting up financial models and this was like a god-sent. Like one of the other reviewers said, this book combined basic finance, Excel functions, and VBA programming. To add practicality to this book, Professor Benninga even showed how to download financial data from the internet. Granted it is rather basic, but it adds to the usability of his book, making it a well-round book.

The best parts are end-of-the chapter exercises. Solutions are provided in the accompanying CD-ROM. See how many ways can you solve the same problem.

Professor Benninga always outlines the assumptions and explains the parameters of each model. We should remember that in many instances, unrealistic assumptions lead to way-of-the mark numbers, rendering the whole modeling process and its calculations useless.

Want to become a advanced-level financial modeler? then master the fundamentals first! this book gets you started.

P.S. I also highly recommend to anyone just starting with Excel modeling to read William J. Orvis's Excel for Scientists and Engineers. It is a bit outdated but still highly useful for its chapters on curve fitting, VBA programming and raw data manipulation.

If you need to build a working valuation model, calculate the risk of a portfolio with 100+ securities, or figure out what return you might expect to get from a portfolio of high-yield bonds, then you'll find Simon Beninga's "Financial Modeling" merits far more than five stars: this is one book that is indispensable.

One of the biggest problems I ran into during my MBA program was the way my professors taught Corporate Finance. I had great profs, true, but they were teaching theoretical concepts from theoretical textbooks. Sure, you learned the basics: CAPM, net present value, basic options and futures, Arbitrage Pricing Theory, VAR and TEV, but I have always maintained that the best way of learning a subject---particularly corporate finance---is by getting your hands dirty and digging into the guts of the material.

Since Corporate Finance, off-balance sheet instruments aside, isn't very dirty, the best way to get a hands-on practical approach in terms of Capital Structure, the appropriate discount rate to use in pricing an asset, risk, and optimal debt and dividends is to program in Excel and Visual Basic. The problem is that many top finance texts don't offer supplemental material to translate the theoretical concepts into actual valuation and spreadsheet models, which any financial analyst will contend is the life-blood of the industry.

With that in mind, Simon Beninga's "Financial Modelling" is a kind of "Joy of Cooking" for initiate investment bankers, corporate financiers, controllers, analysts, and anyone who wants to use core Corporate Finance concepts in the real world. Beninga goes through the standard laundry list of Corporate Finance text topics---from the optimal risky portfolio to the term structure of interest rates---and shows you how to translate these concepts into workable spreadsheet models that can illustrate, illuminate, and get to the heart of a problem.

If you're a new MBA or financial analyst, you'll find much to love in Beninga's approach, and by pairing the newly expanded 2nd edition up with a top theoretical finance textbook (Ross, Westerfield et al.'s "Corporate Finance" is a fine example) you'll get the most out of your MBA program and have a solid foundation for building Excel and Visual Basic financial models that work.

I liken "Financial Modeling" to a cookbook, in that Beninga provides all the ingredients necessary to the model at hand: he begins with a sprinkling of theory, whether it's modeling a bond portfolio's immunization, calculating the cost of capital, estimating a portfolio's Beta with no short-selling, or pricing put and call options using both the binomial theorem and Black-Scholes. His writing is spare, terse, and to the point, but I have learned more about advanced corporate finance theory through Beninga's marvellously pithy writing and copious Excel examples than I have in reading ten 'top of the list' finance books.

In addition to nicely expanded sections on options (including portfolio insurance) and leasing (including the technically sophisticated subject of leveraged leasing, which requires Excel to comprehend), Beninga concludes his sprightly little tome with a section on getting the most out of Excel (useful little shortcuts that a financial analyst will need but may not have heard of) and a nice little introductory primer on programming in Visual Basic.

"Financial Modeling" is an absolute essential if you're going to make Corporate Finance your profession. For an equally elegant and practical treatment of building discounted cash flow models for businesses, the reader would be advised to pick up Beninga's "Corporate Finance", which, while not equally oriented in spreadsheet modeling, is one of the most terse, accessible, and reasonably technically sophisticated Corp-Fin books on the market today.

I recently got Benninga's book on financial modeling. I think it is a great book! For once, someone has taken the time to write a book that takes financial theory out of the classroom and follows it directly in a simple path to useful applications. Unfortunately all too many academic authors fail to take their work the final step and thus much of it can never be fully applied.

I went through many of the exercises and did not find any errors or mistakes. I suspect that those readers commenting on mistakes lack certain basic Excel skills (necessary for this book).

If you're interested in financial modeling, or want to sharpen your finance skills, this is the book to get.

I did not find this book helpful. What a share that I spent my time on this...I could just as easily gotten all of this information from the ProClarity website at no charge and in about 10 minutes.

With financial business intelligence burgeoning as key tool in today competitive market, managers everywhere must learn how to utilize their massive quantities of information in an effective way. This book is perfect in explaining how direct the information traffic flow to key arenas where you can maximize your company's profitability.

I wanted to learn about principals of finance such as depreciation etc...this book is NOT for that. It assumes you know a good bit about finance, but have never heard of Excel...not a likely scenario.

This is an excellent self-study book. You learn MS Excel and Financial Analysis at the same time. You can learn (by doing) the construction of financial statements & cash budgets. For those interested in financial economics the book teaches about the Capital Asset Pricing model, Return On Equity, Net Present Value and the Cost of Capital. It even contains a section on forecasting which is invaluable to those looking to do rather than read about it. Best of all it shows you how to do this stuff with a readily available desktop application(excel). Furthermore, you learn not just how to input the authors formulas but how to build your own using the IF, AVERAGE, TREND functions etc. etc.
The best thing about this book is that you don't just read dry definitions of finance and economic arcana, but practice it as you go along. This really helps to build your skills!

An excellent book that really shows you how powerful Excel can be. But, at the same time, it also teaches you about Finance using Excel. Very, very good. A regret: I would have liked more explanations, in general, on the financial concepts used in the book (especially in the last chapters).

To Dr. Mayes: in your next book, the advanced one a reviewer speaks about, could you give more explanations in general on the financial concepts. Otherwise, keep using this great tool, Excel, or even Access 2000. I refer you to "Building Accounting Systems using Access 97" by James T. Perry, et al. I would think that you could use Access 2000 to apply financial analysis if Access is better suited than Excel, which I am not so sure; although Mr. Perry seems to give quite convincing arguments in favour of using Access instead of Excel.

Thanks for your book that I really liked. I am now up-to-date with Excel and I am keen to learn more about Finance. Thanks to you :-)