FAQ's

Our Training courses are offered in multiple formats:

• Online: Delivered in bite-sized videos in your own time and at your own pace. Click here for more details and pricing.
• Public: Instructor-led day courses in PMB, DBN and JHB. Click here for pricing and available dates.
• Corporate: Onsite or Online Instructor-led training specifically for your staff. Click here for details and pricing.
• Blended: Customised combination of the above to suit your requirements. Click here to send us an email with your requirements or contact us on +27 (0)86 167 3923

NB. The course content and material is the same across all methods of delivery.

For our 3 main courses, namely Excel Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced:

• Online: 4 – 7.5 hours of video content. Being self-paced with access for life, you could complete this in a day or take the rest of your days! We do encourage people to complete them within 3 months though.
• Public and Corporate Onsite: Full 1- day course. (7.5 – 8 hours)
• Corporate Instructor-led Online: Being online, this option is flexible, but typically we would advise splitting the course over 2 half-day sessions.

We have a FREE pre-training assessment that will help determine your current skill level. A comprehensive breakdown of your results will then help you decide which course to start with.
If in doubt, always start with the easier course of the two that you’re debating. We all think we know more than we do! We guarantee that even self-proclaimed advanced excel users will pick up a fair bit from the Beginner Course.

For Online you can pay directly on our site through our secure payment gateway and be up and running in a few minutes. If you prefer, you can pay via EFT using our banking details below. Once we have received proof of payment, we will load you on to the Online Training Platform and assign you to the relevant course(s), within working hours, Monday to Friday.

Bank: Nedbank
Account Name: Custom IT Solutions CC
Branch / Code: 198765
Account Type: Current
Account Number: 1183467117

For Public or Corporate training please contact us on +27 (0)86 167 3923 or send an email to hello@summitsolutions.co.za with your training requirements.

Yes, after each course you will receive an official Certificate of Completion.

Currently, both the Excel Beginner and Intermediate Courses have an optional Post Assessment. This is a comprehensive test which is done in application (not multiple choice) and will give a clear indication of one’s grasp of the content covered in the course.

A separate Certificate, over and above the Completion Certificate will be issued.

Qualified instructors will be available to answer any questions you may have while working through your online course. Questions can be submitted using the online chat box or via email.

Training manuals are old school 😉. Comprehensive follow along Excel Workbooks form the backbone of our training. They contain:

• Follow along exercises to complete while watching the videos or Instructor.
• Self-marking quick questions after each section to test your understanding.
• Key notes on each section embedded within the Workbook.

In addition, all those who attend the Public or Corporate Training will be given lifetime access to the online version of the course. So, the combination of the videos and the workbook is in effect a replacement for the Traditional Training Manual.

In a nutshell, we recommend the following minimum versions per course:

Excel Beginner: Excel 2010
Excel Intermediate and Advanced: Excel 2013
Excel Automation: Excel 2016

Many people still ask us if they can use Excel 2010 to complete the Intermediate and Advanced Courses. The short answer is yes for the bulk of the course content, but there are a few features covered that Excel 2010 does not have. Below are the details:

Flash Fill: This really cool feature was only released in 2013.
Graphs: This is a big section in the Intermediate course. All the features covered are available in 2010, but Excel graphs had a complete overhaul in 2013. As all the training uses the latest Version of Excel, it can be quite difficult to follow a long in this section using 2010.
Pivots: There are a few additional features that have been added in 2013 and 2016, such as automatic grouping, but these are minor enhancements which have manual options in 2010 which are also covered in the training.

The short answer is yes, but you need to be familiar with your Mac!

We have had a number of people work through our courses using the Mac version of Excel. Those who are regular Mac users cope fine, but those who aren’t, struggle quite a bit. Macs work quite differently to PCs, plus the layout of Excel is also different, so it can be tricky to follow along if you’re a newbie on a Mac. Rather use a PC.

Excel is our area of expertise, so we have Excel covered from Beginner through to Advanced and beyond, across all methods of delivery.

We have however recognised the need for training across the other MS Office applications, so have recently launched our Windows and MS Office Foundation course as an Instructor-led corporate offering. (We are in the process of creating an online, self-paced version of this course, which should be available in the second half of 2021)

We also do Excel Consulting, which is billed at an hourly rate.

We have over 20 years of experience in creating Excel Solutions, so if you want to jump straight to the root of your Excel need, click here to email us the details, or give us a call on +27 (0)86 167 3923