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📈 Week 7 · AI in Excel, Reports & Presentations

One dataset, start to finish. Eight months of sugar shipments — interrogated with Copilot in Excel, written up as a monthly execution review, then turned into the deck you would actually present.

📅 Fri 4 Sep · 4–5 PM
📍 Wilmar office
🧭 One dataset, 3 steps
⏱️ 60 min
Host · Xinran Liu

📦 Class materials

Download this before we start — it is the one file we use for all three sections. 120 fictional sugar liftings from Jan to Aug 2026, one row each: what was sold, when it loaded, what any delay cost, whether the cargo was on spec, and when the money came in. Nothing is pre-calculated — days late, demurrage per MT and document days all have to be asked for, which is the exercise. A Field_Guide sheet explains every column in a line.

🚢Shipment execution practice filexlsx

🎯 Sample results

Where the hour ends up. These came out of the section 2 and section 3 prompts run against the file above — one real pass, not a polished model answer. Open them if you get stuck, or at the end to compare against your own.

📄Sample execution reviewdocx 📑Sample deck · 5 slidespptx
Yours will not look like these, and it is not meant to. Generative AI writes a different draft every run — different wording, a different running order, sometimes a different call on what matters most. Treat these as one plausible answer, not the answer. What should match is the numbers: if your draft says something different about the demurrage, one of the two is wrong and it is worth five minutes finding out which.

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Follow along, click to expand, and practice as you go.

1
20 min

📊 Interrogate the Data in Excel

Open the shipment file and put Copilot to work — add the two columns the file leaves out, then find where the money is going.

What you will do
  • Open the practice file and go to the Shipments sheet — 120 liftings, already formatted as an Excel Table.
  • Ask Copilot what is in the file before you ask it anything clever.
  • Add two columns the file leaves out: how late loading finished, and how long documents took.
  • Find the counterparties costing the most, and the cargoes nobody claimed on.
Round 1 · Get your bearings
Summarise this table: total volume loaded and total invoice value by counterparty, and how many liftings there were each month.
Round 2 · Add what is missing
Add a column called Days_Late that is Load_Completed minus Laycan_End in days. Then tell me how many liftings are more than zero.
Add a column called Docs_Days that is Docs_Presented_Date minus BL_Date. Then show the average by counterparty, highest first.
Round 3 · Find the money
Which counterparties have the highest total Demurrage_USD? Show total demurrage and demurrage per MT loaded, sorted highest first.
Show total Demurrage_USD by BL_Month. Is it going up?
List every lifting where Quality_Result is Off spec and Quality_Claim_USD is zero.
Check what it gave you back

Six prompts, six answers — now spend two minutes on the one thing most people skip. Ask Copilot the average number of days from BL to payment, then ask:

How many rows did you use for that average, and what did you do with the ones where Payment_Received_Date is blank?
Eight liftings are still unpaid, so that column is empty for them. Counting them as zero flatters the answer and nobody would ever notice. Asking AI how many rows it used takes five seconds and is the habit worth taking home from this class.
If you finish early
Add a column Qty_Diff_Pct = Loaded_Qty_MT / Contract_Qty_MT - 1 as a percentage, and list any lifting outside plus or minus 5%.
Which counterparties appear most often with Status of Paid late, and how many days past due were they on average?
Tips
  • Copilot needs a proper Excel Table. This file already is one — for your own data, Insert → Table first.
  • Use the exact column names. Copilot matches on the header text, not on what you meant.
  • One question at a time. Chained questions give you chained mistakes with no way to tell which step broke.
  • If Copilot stalls on a grouping question, ask it to insert a PivotTable instead — same answer, different route.
  • Stuck on a column name? The Field_Guide sheet explains every one in a line.
This practice file is entirely invented, so use it freely. Real shipment, counterparty or pricing data follows the usual policy — check before anything leaves your machine.
2
20 min

📄 Write the Execution Review

Turn what you found into the monthly memo the ops and risk committee actually reads — findings, exceptions, and actions with an owner against each one.

Approach
  • Copy the tables Copilot gave you in section 1 — demurrage by counterparty and by month, document days, and the unclaimed off-spec cargoes.
  • Paste them into Claude or Copilot Chat with the prompt below.
  • Read the draft against the workbook. Fix what is wrong before anyone else sees it.
  • Paste into Word and format.
The prompt
You are writing the monthly Shipment Execution Review for the operations and risk meeting of a sugar trading desk. Use only the figures below — do not add or estimate any number. One page, four sections: · Summary — three sentences, starting with the number that matters most. · Execution and Demurrage — who ran late, what it cost, and whether it is getting worse. · Quality and Documents — off-spec cargoes, claims that were never raised, and slow documents. · Actions — at most four. Each one names an owner (Operations, Middle Office, Trading or Credit) and a due date. Factual and direct, bullets under each heading. If the figures do not support a conclusion, say so instead of filling the gap. [paste your Copilot output here]
The four lines doing the work
  • Role and reader: an ops meeting memo reads nothing like a client note.
  • Your own sections: list the headings and AI follows your structure instead of inventing one.
  • "Use only the figures below": the single line that keeps the numbers honest.
  • Owner and due date: turns a finding into something someone has to close.
Then push back on the draft
The Executive Summary is generic. Rewrite it so the first sentence names the counterparty and the dollar amount, and drop anything the figures do not support.
AI drafts, you sign. Check every figure against the workbook — especially any number that turns up in the summary but is not in the tables you pasted. That is where invented figures hide.
3
20 min

📑 Build the Monthly Deck

Turn the review into the five slides you would put in front of the monthly operations meeting — one number per slide, and a last slide people can act on.

Two ways to build it
  • Copilot in PowerPoint: open PowerPoint, click Copilot in the ribbon, point it at your saved review document and describe the deck. You get a styled draft straight away, but less control over the wording.
  • Claude or Copilot Chat: paste the review and ask for the slide content — titles, bullets, speaker notes, the headline number for each slide. More control, and you paste it in yourself. This is usually the better route when the numbers matter.
Prompt — Copilot in PowerPoint
Create a 5-slide deck for the monthly sugar operations meeting from the attached execution review. Slide 1 title and period. Slide 2 the headline numbers. Slide 3 demurrage — who and how much. Slide 4 quality and documents. Slide 5 the actions with owners and due dates. Maximum four bullets per slide, no paragraphs.
Prompt — Claude or Copilot Chat
Turn the execution review below into the content for a 5-slide deck for the monthly operations meeting of a sugar trading desk. The room is operations, middle office, risk and a couple of traders — they know the business, so no background slides. For each slide give me: · a title that states the finding rather than the topic · at most four bullets · the one number to put in large type · one line of speaker notes Slide 5 is the actions, each with an owner and a due date. Direct language, no filler. [paste your report here]
Then fix it slide by slide
Slide 4 is too long and buries the point. Cut it to three bullets, lead with the trend, and move the detail into the speaker notes.
Tips
  • Build from the report, not the spreadsheet — section 2 already did the thinking.
  • Titles that state the finding ("Demurrage is concentrated in two counterparties") beat titles that state the topic ("Demurrage").
  • One number per slide in large type; the bullets are there to explain it.
  • Ask for speaker notes — that is where the nuance goes that will not fit on the slide.
  • If a slide wants a chart, say which cut: demurrage per MT by month, or demurrage by counterparty.
  • Style last. Design tab → Designer, once the words are right.
The action slide is the only one anyone will act on. Before you present, check that every action has a name and a date — AI will leave both blank and nobody will notice until the next meeting.