Sessions need a laptop or desktop.
If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer.
Google Sheets · Foundations
Build a sales summary you can hand over and explain.
What you’ll end up with
One finished spreadsheet. The export exactly as it arrived, a cleaned table beside it, three columns of your own that fix what the export got wrong, a Summary sheet with a row for every branch and every category, a titled chart, and access set so the people you send it to can read it and nothing more.
10
hours in all — about 6 guided, 4 on your own
6
sessions. Each designed to be completed in one sitting
Free
No payment and no card required.
Finishing gives you a completion record showing the work you built, and all three levels earn the Alongrail Certificate in Google Sheets. See what you’ll build →
You don’t need prior experience with Google Sheets. There’s no payment and no card required.
From one raw file to a finished spreadsheet
0175 min
Open the export and make it yours
You have the export in a spreadsheet of your own, named, with the headings staying in view, and you know exactly how many rows you were sent.
02105 min
Find what is wrong with it, and take it out
The repeated order lines are gone, the export's own summary row is gone, the order lines are a named table, and a formula on a second sheet counts them.
03115 min
Clean it with formulas, not by hand
Three new columns hold a branch name you can group by, a quantity you can add up, and a category that is never empty — and a figure on the Summary sheet proves the branch names came down to the number of branches there are.
04105 min
Work out what a line is worth, and what the file is worth
Every order line carries a money figure you wrote, and the Summary sheet holds five figures for the whole file, each one naming the column it came from.
05115 min
Summarise it by branch and by category
The Summary sheet answers the manager's question: what every branch sold, how many order lines it took, what proportion of the whole it carries, and the same by category.
0690 min
Show it, and hand it over
The Summary sheet carries a titled chart, states the largest branch figure, says where its numbers came from, and the file is shared so that the people you send it to can read it and nothing more.
What you need before you start
A laptop or desktop
Sessions need a laptop or desktop. If you’re on your phone now, that’s fine. Enrol now and we’ll email you a link so you can pick up when you’re at a computer. Google Sheets runs in the browser, on Windows or a Mac.
Chrome or Edge
Alongrail runs in the browser too, in its own tab beside Google Sheets.
The course files
Everything you work with is in the download.
What’s free
The whole course: every session, both parts, the files, and your record. Alongrail charges nothing for it. No payment, and no card at any point.
The software
Google Sheets costs nothing for this course.
The data you’ll work with
Every file is invented — the companies, the people and everything in them are made up for the course, and the files are deliberately messy, the way real business data is. Cleaning them is part of the work.
Before you start
The course covers Google Sheets, in your browser.
- A Google account. The free personal kind is enough, and Google Sheets comes with it at no cost.
- A web browser and a working connection — Chrome, Edge or any other. Google Sheets does not run without one.
- A folder of your own for this course, with the supplied export in it. Make a folder called Alongrail inside your Documents folder, a folder called Google Sheets Foundations inside that, and download orders.csv into it. Every session names that folder.
- About an hour of quiet for each session.
- For sessions after the first, the session's own start workbook, which ends .xlsx, downloaded into the same folder. Bring it in with a new file and then Import, choosing Replace spreadsheet rather than Replace current sheet, because a workbook holds more than one sheet and only the first brings them all. Opening it from your Google Drive instead keeps it as an office-format file, and a table and the formulas that name its columns are not reliable there.
- Nothing you build is visible to anyone but you until session six, where you set the file's General access yourself to Anyone with the link, role Viewer — so the people you send the link to can read it and nothing more. Until that step the file is Restricted, which means only your own account can open it.
Alongrail teaches the software and gives you a record of what you built, with a link to the work itself. What happens with it afterwards is yours. We don’t place people and we take no part in anyone’s recruitment process.
Enrol free and start now.
Sign in, confirm the one thing the course needs, and session 1 opens. No payment, and no card at any point.
If something goes wrong on the way, press “Something’s wrong” in the panel, or write to hello@alongrail.com — we reply within one working day.
Frequently asked questions
What you build
A sales summary spreadsheet someone else can open and read, where every figure traces back to a formula you wrote and can explain.
One spreadsheet in your own Google account. The export exactly as it arrived, a cleaned table you can summarise, three columns of your own that fix what the export got wrong, a Summary sheet holding the whole file's figures and a row for every branch and every category, a titled chart, a note saying where the numbers came from, and access set so the people you send it to can read it and nothing more.
How a session works
- Open Google Sheets
- Share your screen
- One instruction
- You do it
- It confirms it
- Next
You open Google Sheets and share your screen. Alongrail reads what’s there and gives you one instruction. You do it. It confirms the step landed, then gives you the next one. If something doesn’t match what you see, one button gets you back on track.
Guided
In the Fields list, tick Region. The chart fills in.
One field on the axis, one measure as the value.
then
On your owna different company’s data
Same job, a different company's files. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask.
Guided, then on your own.
The second part of every session uses a different company’s data, with the same kind of mess in different places. Alongrail stays quiet until you ask. It’s the work your record points to.
About 10 hours in all·about 6 guided·about 4 on your own
What you earn — the record, the certificate and a sample
Completion record
- Name
- Your name
- Course
- Google Sheets Foundations
- Completed
- The date you finish
- Project
- The spreadsheet you built on your own →
- Skills demonstrated
- Turning an export somebody else produced into a spreadsheet of your own, and knowing how much of it there is before changing a cell · Finding what is wrong with a supplied file and removing it deliberately, able to account for every row that went · Cleaning text and numbers with formulas rather than by hand, including one failure Google documents in its own cleaning tools · Writing formulas that name what they mean rather than where it sits · Producing a figure for every row and a set of figures for a whole file, and making the two agree · Summarising by category, stating what a proportion is a proportion of, and proving the parts add back up to the whole · Presenting a summary as a chart and a sheet fit to hand over, with access set deliberately · Checking your own work at every stage without being told the answer
What was built
One spreadsheet in your own Google account. The export exactly as it arrived, a cleaned table you can summarise, three columns of your own that fix what the export got wrong, a Summary sheet holding the whole file's figures and a row for every branch and every category, a titled chart, a note saying where the numbers came from, and access set so the people you send it to can read it and nothing more.
The 6 sessions, and when each was completed on their own
Each session was completed twice: once with step-by-step guidance on one company’s data, then on a second company’s data from a brief, with guidance only when asked. Every check passed on both. Alongrail records the sessions, the checks and the dates; the dashboard itself is the learner’s own, hosted where they chose.
A completion record for Google Sheets Foundations, now. It names the course, the date you finished, the skills you demonstrated, and links the spreadsheet you built on your own. It’s private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time.
The record is a description of work you did, not a claim about you. Anyone who opens it can see the work for themselves.
The Alongrail Certificate in Google Sheets when all three levels are complete. Foundations is the first of three. Practitioner and Professional are in development, with no dates. See the track →
Your screen stays yours
It looks when you ask. Never otherwise. Images of your screen are not stored. What Alongrail sees →
Nothing you build is public until you publish it. Your record is private until you say so, and you can unpublish it at any time.
What’s Google Sheets?
Google Sheets is the software this course is built in. It runs in your browser.
You won’t learn it by watching hours of tutorials. You’ll learn it by building something real with it.
Who you’re building it for
Larkfield Hardware runs five branches. Every branch's till system sends its order lines to head office, and what arrives is a raw comma-separated export: one row per order line, half a trading year of them. Nobody has checked it, and five separate things are wrong with it before anyone looks at a single figure. The regional manager wants one spreadsheet she can open on a Monday morning and read without asking anybody what a number means. She needs to see what each branch sold, how many order lines each one took, which categories are moving, and what proportion of the total each branch is carrying. You are the one building it, she will read it in a browser on her own machine, and she will ask you where the numbers came from.
Your job is to build the spreadsheet that answers it.
Do I need to know Google Sheets already?
No. The course assumes you’ve never opened it.
What if I get stuck?
Press the button in the panel and say what you see. Alongrail works out where you actually are and picks the instruction back up.
Why 10 hours, when other courses are 40?
Because the time is spent doing the work rather than watching it. About 6 hours is guided; the rest is you building the same thing again on your own.
What does Alongrail see on my screen?
Only the window you choose to share, and only when you ask it to look. Images of your screen are not stored by Alongrail. What Alongrail sees →
Can I use a Mac?
Yes. Google Sheets runs in the browser.
What if I miss a week?
Nothing closes. The dates are there to help you keep moving, not to catch you out.
What’s the “on your own” part?
The second half of every session: the same work on a different company’s data, with Alongrail quiet unless you ask. Both parts are needed for your completion record.
Is it really free?
Yes. No payment, and no card at any point.
Who can see what I build?
Nobody, until you say so. Your record is private until you publish it, and you can unpublish it at any time. What you build stays in your own files or account; where a step publishes something to the software’s own site, the step says so and says who can see it.
Where this course sits
Google Sheets Foundations is Foundations in Google Sheets. The track has three levels; each one you complete earns its own record, and all of them together earn the Alongrail Certificate in Google Sheets. All the courses →