I see a lot of seasoned finance and accounting people promoting the learning of skills that most FP&A professionals don’t really need. What two of these skills are overrated for FP&A professionals?
​
Coding in VBA and writing macros.
​
This is coming from me, someone who’s been writing macros for almost two decades. Though some people may benefit from understanding the language, most people just don’t need to know how to write it.
​
When I bring up my opposition to learning VBA to write macros, some of my modeling elders rebuff me and tell me how important it is. That’s true, that it can be important in certain circumstances. But in the grand picture of what you should be learning, mastering macros is nowhere near the top of the list.
​
You can be an exceptional finance professional without being an Excel expert. And you can be an Excel expert without having any experience in finance. That’s especially true when it comes to VBA — you can do so much without having to master coding.
​
Consider taking a mastery of VBA off your list until you’ve learned these other tools.
​
1) Dynamic formulas and functions
2) Dynamic tables, charts, and graphs
3) Power Query and Power Pivot
4) DAX language
5) How to address FP&A challenges effectively without macros
6) ChatGPT prompting
​
If you’ve learned numbers 1 through 6, come back to me and tell me whether you still think you need to learn VBA. I bet your mind will be changed.