It looks clean.Effortless.No helper columns.No visible mess. That’s the problem. We’ve all been told that modern Excel formulas are smarter — that dynamic arrays make reporting faster, cleaner, more “automated.”But some automation hides danger better than any manual error ever could. And nothing proves that more than =UNIQUE(). Why =UNIQUE() Can Quietly Wreck Your Model […]
Every finance analyst has a love story that ends badly.Mine started with =IF(). It seemed harmless at first.A quick fix here, a logic tweak there — a little “if this, then that” to make a stubborn report behave. But one day, I opened a model with 1,742 nested IFs.No macros. No VBA. Just raw logic […]
https://sarahgschlott.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/pexels-goumbik-590022-1-modified-1.jpg7951200Sarah Schlotthttps://sarahgschlott.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/icon-10c-two-blob-light_clearspace-1030x1030.pngSarah Schlott2025-10-23 19:40:482026-09-24 21:56:19The Most Dangerous Excel Formula in Finance
A few years ago, “AI in FP&A” meant faster reconciliations and prettier dashboards.Now it means something radically different. It means systems that think, not just calculate.That interpret, not just automate. Across finance, a quiet revolution is unfolding.Teams aren’t using AI to replace themselves — they’re using it to reason with reality faster than ever before. […]
I just found out I’ve been nominated for the 2025 Office of the CFO Awards by Datarails — the closest thing finance has to the Oscars. And honestly, I’m still not sure if I should thank my forecasting model or apologize to it. Because if you’ve ever spent 11 p.m. whispering “please balance” to a […]
https://sarahgschlott.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/pexels-goumbik-590022-1-modified-1.jpg7951200Sarah Schlotthttps://sarahgschlott.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/icon-10c-two-blob-light_clearspace-1030x1030.pngSarah Schlott2025-10-18 08:25:062026-09-24 21:56:20I Didn’t Choose the Spreadsheet Life — The Spreadsheet Life Chose Me
Not by much — just $180K.Enough to ruin dinner. We’d spent the week chasing late renewals and cleaning up deferred revenue schedules, but when I opened the dashboard at 10:42 p.m., it hit me: the model was right, the data wasn’t. Classic SaaS problem. Salesforce said one thing, NetSuite said another, and the spreadsheet was […]
https://sarahgschlott.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/pexels-tima-miroshnichenko-6694878-modified-1.jpg8001200Sarah Schlotthttps://sarahgschlott.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/icon-10c-two-blob-light_clearspace-1030x1030.pngSarah Schlott2025-10-17 07:30:072026-09-24 21:56:21The night before our board meeting, the ARR report didn’t tie out.
Not on purpose.Just death by optimism. We’d been running with a simple rule: assume “steady-state churn” based on last quarter’s average. It worked fine — until enterprise renewals started slipping into the next quarter, and the illusion broke. ARR looked flat.But cash told the truth. That’s when we learned the hard way: averages in SaaS […]
https://sarahgschlott.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/pexels-tima-miroshnichenko-6694492-modified-1.jpg8001200Sarah Schlotthttps://sarahgschlott.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/icon-10c-two-blob-light_clearspace-1030x1030.pngSarah Schlott2025-10-16 07:30:572026-09-24 21:56:21We rebuilt our churn model after it lied to us — in front of the board.
You’re juggling the board deck, a half-built forecast, 12 Excel tabs, 4 Slack threads, and an ERP that’s mid-integration. Every ping feels urgent. Every spreadsheet feels late. And by 6 p.m., you realize you’ve spent the day managing inputs, not outcomes. That’s the quiet tax of context switching. It kills clarity before it kills time. […]
https://sarahgschlott.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/pexels-rdne-7948063-2-modified-2.jpg8001200Sarah Schlotthttps://sarahgschlott.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/icon-10c-two-blob-light_clearspace-1030x1030.pngSarah Schlott2025-10-15 07:30:542026-09-24 21:56:21Some days being a SaaS CFO feels like air traffic control — but every plane is on fire.
Every SaaS CFO learns this the hard way. You start with a clean build. A few modules. Smooth integrations. Then scale hits — 3x headcount, 4x customers, 9x data. Suddenly, your ERP isn’t helping operations. It’s holding them hostage. You’ve got NetSuite scripts looping into oblivion. Salesforce fields that stopped syncing three weeks ago. And […]
I’ve watched SaaS finance teams chase “precision” like it’s a religion — 4 decimal places deep in ARR projections while the renewal team is still updating Salesforce manually. Then the board asks why revenue missed by 8%. Cue the CFO’s favorite lie: “It was timing.” No, it wasn’t. It was hubris. We built our forecast […]
Not figuratively. Literally — the workbook crashed, the links went dark, and the ARR bridge pulled a vanishing act two hours before the deck was due. I stared at the screen like a pilot watching the dashboard flicker mid-flight. Here’s the part nobody writes about: the panic isn’t just technical. It’s existential. You start questioning […]
https://sarahgschlott.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/pexels-pavel-danilyuk-7868972-1-modified-1.jpg8011200Sarah Schlotthttps://sarahgschlott.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/icon-10c-two-blob-light_clearspace-1030x1030.pngSarah Schlott2025-10-10 07:30:382026-09-24 21:56:22The night before the board meeting, my forecast broke.
The Most Dangerous “Modern” Excel Formula: =UNIQUE()
It looks clean.Effortless.No helper columns.No visible mess. That’s the problem. We’ve all been told that modern Excel formulas are smarter — that dynamic arrays make reporting faster, cleaner, more “automated.”But some automation hides danger better than any manual error ever could. And nothing proves that more than =UNIQUE(). Why =UNIQUE() Can Quietly Wreck Your Model […]
The Most Dangerous Excel Formula in Finance
Every finance analyst has a love story that ends badly.Mine started with =IF(). It seemed harmless at first.A quick fix here, a logic tweak there — a little “if this, then that” to make a stubborn report behave. But one day, I opened a model with 1,742 nested IFs.No macros. No VBA. Just raw logic […]
The Quiet Revolution: AI in FP&A 2025
A few years ago, “AI in FP&A” meant faster reconciliations and prettier dashboards.Now it means something radically different. It means systems that think, not just calculate.That interpret, not just automate. Across finance, a quiet revolution is unfolding.Teams aren’t using AI to replace themselves — they’re using it to reason with reality faster than ever before. […]
I Didn’t Choose the Spreadsheet Life — The Spreadsheet Life Chose Me
I just found out I’ve been nominated for the 2025 Office of the CFO Awards by Datarails — the closest thing finance has to the Oscars. And honestly, I’m still not sure if I should thank my forecasting model or apologize to it. Because if you’ve ever spent 11 p.m. whispering “please balance” to a […]
The night before our board meeting, the ARR report didn’t tie out.
Not by much — just $180K.Enough to ruin dinner. We’d spent the week chasing late renewals and cleaning up deferred revenue schedules, but when I opened the dashboard at 10:42 p.m., it hit me: the model was right, the data wasn’t. Classic SaaS problem. Salesforce said one thing, NetSuite said another, and the spreadsheet was […]
We rebuilt our churn model after it lied to us — in front of the board.
Not on purpose.Just death by optimism. We’d been running with a simple rule: assume “steady-state churn” based on last quarter’s average. It worked fine — until enterprise renewals started slipping into the next quarter, and the illusion broke. ARR looked flat.But cash told the truth. That’s when we learned the hard way: averages in SaaS […]
Some days being a SaaS CFO feels like air traffic control — but every plane is on fire.
You’re juggling the board deck, a half-built forecast, 12 Excel tabs, 4 Slack threads, and an ERP that’s mid-integration. Every ping feels urgent. Every spreadsheet feels late. And by 6 p.m., you realize you’ve spent the day managing inputs, not outcomes. That’s the quiet tax of context switching. It kills clarity before it kills time. […]
Your ERP isn’t scaling — it’s staging a coup.
Every SaaS CFO learns this the hard way. You start with a clean build. A few modules. Smooth integrations. Then scale hits — 3x headcount, 4x customers, 9x data. Suddenly, your ERP isn’t helping operations. It’s holding them hostage. You’ve got NetSuite scripts looping into oblivion. Salesforce fields that stopped syncing three weeks ago. And […]
Your forecast isn’t broken. Your assumptions are drunk.
I’ve watched SaaS finance teams chase “precision” like it’s a religion — 4 decimal places deep in ARR projections while the renewal team is still updating Salesforce manually. Then the board asks why revenue missed by 8%. Cue the CFO’s favorite lie: “It was timing.” No, it wasn’t. It was hubris. We built our forecast […]
The night before the board meeting, my forecast broke.
Not figuratively. Literally — the workbook crashed, the links went dark, and the ARR bridge pulled a vanishing act two hours before the deck was due. I stared at the screen like a pilot watching the dashboard flicker mid-flight. Here’s the part nobody writes about: the panic isn’t just technical. It’s existential. You start questioning […]