Jim Colville began working with Excel in Version 3. As a practicing CPA Excel was a game-changing tool for working and consulting with clients. The consulting and Excel educating service exploded with Excel v 5, the major upgrade from version 4 with the introduction of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). You will see many of his projects on the Consulting page. What’s important is that projects were not simply using a particular Excel feature, say sorting, to solve the business problem at hand. The solution was first, “what is the issue and what it the best way to approach it”. Then Excel features and tools are applied. Most all projects use several features in conjunction with each other.  This could not be done without Jim’s years of experience as a practicing CPA servicing business clients and working with thier issues and creating solutions.

Throughout his career, Jim has been passionate about education. One early role was instructing the summer intern program for MBA students while at Alexander Grant and Company, a National CPA firm, number nine at the time of the “Big 8” (currenty Grant Thornton).  He was also the primary team member for staff training in the Los Angeles office. Of course, all of this was CPA focused and before Excel and the Internet. After moving to San Diego, he created a new program for UCSD (University of California San Diego or UC San Diego) Extension Studies in the 1993 time frame teaching Excel.  The original courses were beginning Excel which quickly expanded to additional courses through advanced excel and eventually VBA programming. He was awarded UCSD Instructor of the Year in June 1995 and continue the program through about 1997.

Prior to teaching at UCSD Jim formed CSSI (Consolidated Seminars Systems, Inc.) to teach desktop software, primarily Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect. The curriculum soon evolved to Excel, Word, Access and Windows. CSSI was the largest PC education company in San Diego and was sold as the market became saturated.

To continue the Excel education, the website Info-Stat.com (with the hyphen) was created in 1996 for the purpose of Excel education which was the predecessor to this website. 

Jim Colville was primarily a practicing CPA working with businesses and financial reporting in which Excel was and is the perfect tool for these services. His practice was three services running together. CPA, Education and Technology with Excel as the main focus.  The education, as mentioned above, was provide through Accounting Day and Accounting Education Institute. The curriculum was accounting and finance, technology and Excel and professional development.

Jim’s LinkedIn page provides more detail on his CPA career and education. It will list certain key education events including his presentation at the IMA National Convention June 14, 2022 on Excel Dynamic Arrays-The Future of Excel.

Jim retired as a practicing CPA in 2020 and is focusing on Excel education and solutions and, as Jim Colville, CPA-retired, many of his services are Excel solutions projects for the business world, which includes businesses, large and small (public and private), nonprofit organizations, churches and HOAs. Visit his website, JMCAdvisor.com for a full list of his services in his active retirement.