MO-220 practice, objective by objective

A map of every MO-220 objective to the hands-on lessons that practice it, plus four timed checkpoints and a 50-minute mock exam to test yourself under the clock.

The MO-220 exam checks whether you can do accounting work in a spreadsheet: clean an export, build a trial balance, reconcile a bank account, depreciate an asset, work out ratios. It is a hands-on exam, so reading about the skills only gets you part of the way. You need to do the tasks, get them wrong, see why, and do them again with different numbers until the method is automatic.

That is what Accounting Exercises is built for. Every exercise is a real task in a real spreadsheet in your browser. Your formulas run, and the results are checked against a correct solution as soon as you press Check. Wrong cells are marked with a hint about the likely mistake. Press New numbers and you get the same task with a different company and different amounts.

This page lists every objective in the published MO-220 skills outline and links each one to the lesson that covers it. That includes the objectives about Excel features rather than formulas: importing, sorting, number formats, Conditional Formatting, Data Validation, PivotTables and charts each have a work area of their own, graded on the result. Where a lesson covers only part of an objective, the table says so. One objective is still coming soon. We would rather show you the gaps than pretend they aren't there.

What the exam is, in brief

Everything in this section comes from the official skills outline and the Microsoft Learn certification page.

• The exam takes 50 minutes. It is proctored and performance-based: you complete tasks in the application rather than answer questions about it. [Official]
• It is scheduled through Certiport for students and educators. [Official]
• The certification is renewed every 60 months. [Official]
• The outline assumes about 150 hours of instruction before you sit the exam. [Official]
• The Microsoft Learn page for the certification says: "No training available for this exam." [Official]
• Task instructions avoid naming functions. They describe what you need to achieve, so you have to know which function fits which job. [Official]

The last point matters most for how you practice. Instead of "use SUMIFS", you might read "total the deposits that the bank has not yet recorded", and you need to recognize that as a conditional sum. Our exercises are written the same way: each task describes the purpose, and choosing the function is part of the work.

Source [Official]: the MO-220 skills outline, arch-center.azureedge.net/Credentials/exam-mo-220-mos-excel-for-accounting-associate.pdf (© 2025 Certiport), and the Microsoft Learn certification page, learn.microsoft.com/en-us/credentials/certifications/mos-excel-for-accounting-associate/. The objective names in the tables below are our short summaries of the outline's four sections.

1. Prepare accounting data for analysis

The first section is about getting raw data into shape before any accounting happens: bringing it in, cleaning it, checking it and reshaping it. These are everyday tasks with a bank export or a sales download.

The exercises here practice the questions worth asking of every export. Are there duplicates, and which copy is the extra one? Is anything out of range, such as an expense claim over the approval limit? Does one column hold two things, like an account code and a name? Are the dates real dates, and which fiscal quarter does each one fall in? When is each invoice due under its payment terms?

2. Prepare a trial balance

A trial balance lists every account with its debit or credit balance, and the two columns must agree. In a spreadsheet you build it from a ledger: total each account's debits and credits, look up what kind of account it is, and put the net balance on the correct side.

Each formula lesson isolates one family of functions, then the trial balance lesson puts them together: conditional sums for each account's debits and credits, an exact-match lookup in an unsorted chart of accounts, and logical functions so each net balance shows in only one column.

3. Prepare and analyze financial statements

The outline limits this section to the income statement and the balance sheet. It covers building them, analysing them with ratios, catching errors and presenting the results.

The statement lessons build an income statement and a balance sheet from a trial balance, including contra assets and net income carried in before closing, then format them for presentation. The PivotTable and chart lessons summarize a ledger and build a dashboard, graded on what the table and charts show, not on how they look. The ratio lessons cover each family the outline names, and the error lesson hands you a sheet with off-by-one ranges, references that broke when filled and errors that spread, and asks you to trace and fix them.

4. Perform routine accounting activities

This section has the most objectives. All but one have a lesson with three exercises of rising difficulty.

All payroll exercises use clearly labelled example rates for practice, not real tax rates, and nothing on the site tells you how to calculate your own taxes.

Timed checkpoints and a mock exam

Once you can do the tasks one at a time, practice doing them against the clock. A timed test strings exercises together under one timer, the way the exam does. There are no hints, no feedback and no solutions while the timer runs. Press Submit and next to lock in an answer, or Skip to leave it unanswered. When the time is up, your current answer is graded and you get a results page with every question, your score and the reference answer for each one.

Every test draws new numbers each time you take it, so you can retake a checkpoint after a week of practice and know that a better score means better skills, not a better memory.

Four domain checkpoints, 20 to 30 minutes each

Each checkpoint samples one section of the outline and mixes easier and harder tasks:

• Checkpoint 1: Prepare accounting data for analysis. Nine tasks in 25 minutes: a bank import, duplicates, hidden rows, Data Validation, out-of-range values, split codes, tidy text, fiscal periods and due dates.
• Checkpoint 2: Prepare a trial balance. Six tasks: a two-level sort, a two-condition filter, totals by account, a lookup that catches missing accounts, normal balances and a full trial balance.
• Checkpoint 3: Prepare and analyze financial statements. Nine tasks in 30 minutes: an income statement, a balance sheet, presentation formats, profitability and debt ratios, an anomaly rule, errors that spread, a PivotTable and a chart.
• Checkpoint 4: Perform routine accounting activities. Six tasks: a loan payment split, reconciling items, receivables and payables aging, net pay and units-of-activity depreciation.

The 50-minute mock exam

The MO-220 practice mock exam gives you 50 minutes, the length of the real exam, for eighteen tasks from all four sections: four from data preparation, three from the trial balance, six from financial statements (including formatting, a highlighting rule, a PivotTable and a chart) and five from routine accounting activities, the section with the most objectives. None of its tasks repeat the checkpoints, so it is a fresh test of the same skills. Like the exam, every task describes its purpose instead of naming a function.

Its score is ours, not a prediction of an exam score. Score 70% or more on the mock exam and you get a certificate of completion with a link employers can verify: the numbers are chosen and your answers graded on our server. It records that you passed our practice exam; it is not the MO-220 certification, which only Certiport's proctored exam awards. The checkpoints and the mock exam use Premium exercises, so they need a Premium plan.

How to use this map

Work section by section. For each one, do the free exercise in every lesson, then the harder ones, then take that section's checkpoint. Sections 4 and 2 are a good place to start because their tasks are the ones you will meet in any accounting job, exam or not. Leave the mock exam until you have taken all four checkpoints, then use it to find the sections you need to revisit.

A few habits make practice count:

• Read the purpose, then name the function. Before you type, say which function you need and why. That is the skill the exam's wording tests.
• Refer to cells, not numbers. Formulas that point at the inputs survive New numbers. Typed constants don't.
• Fill down instead of retyping. One correct formula with the right mix of relative and absolute references is faster and safer than ten hand-made ones.
• Repeat with new numbers. Getting an exercise right once proves you followed it. Getting it right three times with different companies proves you can do it.

You can see all lessons, including the bookkeeping track, on the lessons page. The first exercise of every lesson is free with no sign-up. Premium unlocks the rest, along with the timed tests; plans are on the pricing page. If you are preparing for an employer's spreadsheet test, see accounting Excel test practice.