A function-by-function catalog of Excel's built-in finance and statistics tools, not an investing book at all. It teaches you what PMT, IRR, and DURATION actually calculate, with real worked numbers, but never tells you what to do with the answer.
The one idea
This is volume six of a self-published series called Excel for Professionals, and it reads exactly like a reference manual because that is what it is. Author Vijay Gupta walks through every financial and statistical function Excel shipped with in 2002: loan payment functions (PMT, IPMT, PPMT), discounted cash flow functions (PV, NPV, XNPV, IRR, MIRR, XIRR, FV), depreciation functions (SLN, SYD, DB, DDB, VDB), bond and securities functions (PRICE, YIELD, DURATION, DISC), and the Solver and Scenario tools for constrained optimization and if-then analysis.
For each function the book states which arguments it needs, what each argument means in plain terms, and then runs one worked example with real numbers so you can check that you typed the formula correctly. There is no discussion of when a DCF is the wrong tool, how to pick a discount rate, or how to interpret a result that looks wrong. The book's job stops at getting the formula to return a number.
The organizing idea, stated by Gupta himself in the introduction to the add-ins chapter, is that Excel already contains most of the financial toolkit a professional needs and most users never learn where it is. The book exists to be that index.
What it actually teaches
The book is not sequential; it is organized into four function groups a reader would look up independently depending on the task in front of them.
LOAN AMORTIZATION
PMT gives the total periodic payment, IPMT and PPMT split it into interest and principal, and CUMIPMT and CUMPRINC total those over a range of periods. The book's worked example is a $20,000 car loan at 8.99% annual (0.75% monthly) over 48 months: at month 24, IPMT returns -84.70 and PPMT returns -412.90, summing to the constant PMT of -497.61. Cumulative interest for months 1 through 24 (CUMIPMT) comes to -2,666.00 against cumulative principal (CUMPRINC) of -9,187.74.
DISCOUNTED CASH FLOW
PV and NPV find present value (PV needs constant payments, NPV allows them to vary), IRR and XIRR find the rate at which NPV or XNPV equals zero, and FV projects forward. Worked example: depositing $1,000 now plus $100 at the start of each of the next 12 months at 6% annual (0.5% monthly) gives FV(0.5%, 12, -100, -1000, 1) = $2,301.40. Elsewhere, RATE(48, -200, 8000) returns 0.77% monthly, which is 9.24% annualized, for a four-year $8,000 loan paid at $200 a month.
DEPRECIATION SCHEDULES
Four methods produce different first-year and later-year allowances for the same asset: $100,000 cost, $20,000 salvage, 10-year life. Straight line (SLN) is flat at $8,000 every period. Sum-of-years digits (SYD) starts at $14,545 and declines. Double declining balance (DDB, factor 2) front-loads hardest: $20,000 in year one, dropping to $0 by year nine. VDB lets the schedule switch from declining balance to straight line partway through once straight line would produce a bigger write-off.
BOND, SECURITIES, AND OPTIMIZATION TOOLS
A separate function family (COUPDAYBS, COUPNCD, DURATION, MDURATION, YIELD, PRICE, DISC, PRICEDISC, TBILLYIELD, and others) prices coupon bonds, discounted securities, and T-bills from settlement date, maturity, coupon rate, and yield. The Solver add-in handles constrained optimization (maximize or minimize a target cell subject to inequality constraints), and Scenarios and Goal Seek handle simpler if-this-then-that questions.
What it looks like Monday morning
A reader who still keeps old workbooks in Excel 2003 formats gets real value: the argument order for CUMIPMT, the sign convention that trips people up on IRR (cash out must be negative, cash in positive, or you get a #NUM! error), and a number to check a formula against. Everyone else opens Excel 2016 or later, and immediately the book's navigation instructions stop applying: there is no INSERT/FUNCTION menu and no TOOLS/ADD-INS menu to click through, because the ribbon replaced both in 2007. The functions themselves are still there under Formulas, and Analysis ToolPak now loads from the Data tab without the multi-step activation the book walks through in chapter 13.
| Function | What it returns | Month 24 result | Month 37 result |
|---|---|---|---|
| IPMT | Interest payment for that month | -84.70 | -42.63 |
| PPMT | Principal payment for that month | -412.90 | -454.98 |
| PMT | Total payment (constant every month) | -497.61 | -497.61 |
The book uses this to show that PMT stays flat while the interest share shrinks and the principal share grows as the loan pays down.
Because the RATE is estimated using iterations, the result may be none, one or more solutions.Vijay Gupta, Financial Analysis Using Excel
Where it fails
- Every navigation instruction describes a menu that no longer exists. The book is built entirely around INSERT/FUNCTION and TOOLS/ADD-INS, the Excel 97 to XP menu structure stated on its own copyright page. Microsoft replaced that menu system with the ribbon in Excel 2007. Chapter 13's multi-page walkthrough of activating the Analysis ToolPak through TOOLS/ADD-INS describes a step that has not existed for close to twenty years; the ToolPak now ships active or one Data-tab click away.
- It is a function glossary, not an investing or portfolio book. Despite sitting on an Investing & Portfolio shelf, nothing here discusses valuation judgment, position sizing, what discount rate to pick, or when a DCF answer should be distrusted. Every entry is syntax and one clean worked number. A reader looking for how to analyze an investment, rather than how to type PV() into a cell, gets nothing.
- The promised sample files are gone. The book repeatedly points to companion workbooks (Loan.xls, Cash_Flow.xls) and additional examples at vjbooks.net/excel/samples.htm. That domain and those files are unreachable now, so the worked tables printed in the text are the only material a reader actually gets.
- Every worked example uses clean, idealized inputs. The car loan is a round $20,000 at a stated rate over an exact 48 months. The depreciation example is a round $100,000 asset with a round $20,000 salvage value. None of the examples show a messy real input, a mid-period rate change, or a sign error, which is exactly where these functions actually break for a first-time user, as the book's own IRR #NUM! warning half-acknowledges without ever demonstrating it.
- It is self-published with no visible editing pass. The index is mislabeled as page 242 when the book runs to 254 pages, chapter numbering references ("see chapter 42 to chapter 46" in a footnote) point to chapters that do not exist in a 15-chapter book, and the author's own closing note in chapter 14 admits he skipped supplying sample data for several exercises because readers "glaze over" repeated examples.
Who it is for
Buy it if
Someone maintaining an old Excel 97 to 2003 workbook who needs a plain-English cheat sheet for what PMT, IPMT, CUMIPMT, IRR, or a specific depreciation function actually calculates, with one real number to check their own formula against.
Skip it if
Anyone on a modern version of Excel, since the entire navigation layer is obsolete; anyone wanting actual investing, valuation, or portfolio judgment rather than formula syntax; or anyone who could get the same argument list faster from Excel's own built-in function help.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. It costs you nothing extra, and it does not change what gets recommended or what the verdict says.