I like dynamic arrays. I use them. I also think Excel has become very good at making fragile logic look respectable. =UNIQUE() is a perfect example. It is clean. Fast. No helper columns. No visible mess. And if the source data is dirty, it can give you a beautifully organized version of the wrong answer. […]
I have nothing against =IF(). I have something against discovering that a financial model contains 1,742 of them and that three people have different theories about what they mean. That is not an Excel problem. That is a design problem wearing parentheses. IF() is one of the most useful formulas in Excel. It is also […]
I used to joke that intercompany eliminations were the Bermuda Triangle of consolidation.Everything went in — invoices, transfers, equity movements — and nothing came out clean. Month-end would arrive, and I’d sit there at 10:30 p.m. staring at mismatched balances, praying that NetSuite’s eliminations report wasn’t lying to me. If you’ve ever tried to reconcile […]
Why Cash Flow Forecasting Breaks FP&A Models Cash flow forecasting is one of the hardest FP&A tasks. If near-term liquidity is the problem, I would start with the 13-week structure before worrying about automation. You can nail revenue projections, lock in expense budgets, and still lose credibility if your cash schedule doesn’t tie out. In […]
Excel Meets Its Secret Weapon Excel has always been the quiet workhorse of business. Rows, columns, SUM, VLOOKUP — a reliable toolbox. But mastering it came at a cost: you either memorized hundreds of functions or spent hours debugging formulas that broke without warning. Now there’s a twist. You don’t have to do it alone. […]
The first tear hit the table before the board chair could finish his sentence. It wasn’t loud.Just that faint, traitorous tap a CFO hopes no one hears. But in the middle of the Q4 earnings review, with a dozen sets of eyes hunting for weakness, it was the kind of sound that shifts the room’s […]
“If your forecast only works when you believe in it, it’s not a forecast—it’s a faith-based initiative.” It started with a spreadsheet.Doesn’t it always? One column of “Actuals,” one column of “Plan,” and a third column that looked like it was about to ghost me. That’s where VLOOKUP lived—dragged across 400 rows, promising to unite […]
It started as a harmless spreadsheet.A nice, clean workbook. Six tabs. No merged cells. A color palette you could take home to your mother. Then one day, it got… curious. You know how it is in SaaS finance. You build one pivot table to tidy up last quarter’s churn analysis, and suddenly it’s doing cross-tabulations […]
Let’s be honest — no one wakes up thinking, “Today’s the day I completely lose my grip on reality because of a spreadsheet.” And yet, here we are.Because Excel doesn’t just store numbers.It stores your soul. In FP&A, shortcuts are supposed to make you faster.Instead, they just accelerate the moment you realize your life’s work […]
IF(logic_test, value_if_true, value_if_false) Was it the logic test?Was it the value_if_false?Or was it me? Hard to say now, sitting on the couch next to a husband who won’t make eye contact, because apparently, I “weaponized Excel again.” But I know this: somewhere between “just a quick model update” and “you built what??” I lost the […]
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