Database Basics for Financial Professionals

📋 Overview

In today’s digital age, databases have become the backbone of every business technology, application, platform, and service. Every system relies on databases to store and organize information, from financial records in Quickbooks and Xero to sales efforts in Salesforce and Hubspot. Popular reporting tools like Power BI and Excel utilize databases to create beautiful, insightful dashboards. Despite the widespread use and importance of databases, many financial professionals lack a basic understanding of how they operate. Traditionally, working with databases has been delegated to an organization’s IT department, leaving the accounting team out of scope. However, in today’s technology-driven environment, accountants need to have a basic understanding of how databases work and the ability to query data independently. Our database basics course focuses on the knowledge most helpful for financial professionals. Through hands-on learning, participants will develop the skills to query data from a database or cloud provider and use it to create insightful reports in Excel or Power BI. By the end of the course, participants will feel empowered to design their dashboards and work more effectively with cloud data. With our database basics course, gain the knowledge you need to succeed in today’s digital age and enhance your value as a financial professional.

👥 Who Should Attend

A business professional who would like to learn more about using a database for reporting and analysis.

🎯 Learning Objectives

• List the major database platforms such as MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Postgres, Oracle, and more. Discuss their major features and how they are best utilized in an organization.
• Discuss the major characteristics, features, and syntax of the structured query language (SQL) and how it is used to interact with a database. Recall and explain the major SQL verbs such as SELECT, JOIN, WHERE, GROUP, and their related function.
• Develop a basic SELECT statement in SQL to query data into Microsoft Excel. This will allow for data to be directly imported into a spreadsheet from a database without having to go into an application.
• Identify the various tools to assist with working with databases such as DBeaver and SQL Management Studio. These tools help write and debug database queries and reports.
• Demonstrate SQL abilities by using Microsoft Power Query (for Excel or Power BI) to query a database and create reports from multiple database tables.
• List major SQL helper functions such as LENGTH, COUNT, SUM, CONCAT, MIN, MAX, etc. to modify or aggregate data for reporting.

🚀 What You'll Walk Away With

• You'll stop waiting on IT and start pulling your own financial data directly into Excel.
• You'll build SQL queries using SELECT and JOIN to combine information from different tables.
• You'll use Power Query to clean and organize database records for your reports.
• You'll apply functions like SUM and COUNT to aggregate large datasets instantly.
• You'll choose the right tools, like DBeaver, to write and debug your database queries.

📚 Major Topics

1. Introduction and Overview of Databases
2. Review of Major Database Components
3. Overview of Structured Query Language (SQL)
4. Creating and Working with Tables Databases
5. Using Power Query to Access Your Data in Excel

🏷️ Topics

❓ Questions

✍️ A Note from the Author

I spent years watching finance teams wait days for IT to pull simple reports, which always felt like a waste of talent. I wrote this course because I believe you shouldn't be locked out of your own data just because you don't have a computer science degree. We'll start from the ground up to make sure you're comfortable talking to a database directly.