Cue the floodgates.

Someone (from Marketing, naturally) posted a Medium think piece on how “spreadsheets are a relic of the past.” Someone else chimed in about their nephew using Notion for budgets. The COO asked if Tableau could just “handle the modeling.”

By the end of the week, the company’s FP&A team was politely asked to “explore modernizing their toolset.”

The punchline? Within three weeks, the team was building their models—in PowerPoint.

And as ridiculous as that sounds, the story holds a mirror up to what I see happening across a lot of finance teams today.

So let’s break it down.

The Setup: Death by a Thousand “Modernization” Initiatives

The company? A well-funded Series D SaaS unicorn.

The FP&A team? Smart. Experienced. Strong modeling chops.

The problem? Leadership had developed a collective allergy to anything that looked “old school.”

It started innocently enough:

• The CFO wanted more “visually engaging” outputs for board decks.
• The CRO complained that Excel models “weren’t collaborative enough.”
• The CEO’s chief of staff suggested that “modern finance teams use dynamic dashboards.”

Pretty soon, Excel was on life support.

The Shift: From Models to Slides

Here’s how it actually played out:

By month three? Entire operating models were being built in PowerPoint tables. Yes, with manual calculations. Yes, copy-pasted. Yes, with version control managed via email chains.

And yes, it was a disaster.

The Warning Signs: How to Know You’re on This Path

I’ve seen this happen more than once. Here are the telltale signs:

1. Leadership starts optimizing for presentation over accuracy

When the primary feedback on your model is “Can we make this chart more on-brand?”

2. Decision-makers stop engaging with model drivers

If you hear “Just show me the summary slide,” you’re already in the danger zone.

3. BI tools are treated as replacements for modeling

Dashboards are great. But they’re not scenario engines.

4. Finance gets pushed to deliver in “collaborative formats”

Translation: Formats that are easy to screenshot, not formats that are built for decision-making.

5. Operators start bypassing Finance for modeling

Because the Finance outputs are now too sanitized to be useful.

Why This Happens: The Seduction of the Pretty Deck

The truth? A gorgeous slide deck is seductive. It makes the numbers feel polished. Digestible. Safe.

But the second you lose visibility into what’s driving those numbers, you’re flying blind.

As one FP&A lead put it to me: “We went from pilots to flight attendants. Smiling, serving up pre-packaged metrics, but not flying the plane anymore.”

What’s Lost: The Real Cost of Killing Excel

Here’s what the company actually lost in this shift:

In short? Finance ceded its seat at the strategy table.

The Underlying Issue: Misunderstanding What Modeling Is For

Too many leadership teams think modeling is about producing a pretty number.

It’s not. It’s about:

• Testing assumptions
• Understanding sensitivities
• Driving tradeoff decisions
• Preparing for uncertainty

And guess what? You can’t do that in PowerPoint.

A Better Way: Modernize How You Use Excel, Not Whether

I’m not anti-modernization. I teach teams how to do this the right way.

Here’s how:

1. Clean up your models

• Use Power Query to automate data pulls
• Structure models for transparency and flexibility
• Build scenario engines, not static forecasts

2. Separate calculation layer from presentation layer

• Do the modeling in Excel (or your modeling tool of choice)
• Drive the outputs into dashboards or board decks

3. Train leadership on how to engage with models

• Teach them to ask: “What’s driving this? What are the assumptions? What’s the sensitivity?”

4. Protect core modeling time

• Don’t let Finance become a slide factory
• Guard time for actual analysis and decision prep

Why This Matters: In Uncertainty, Speed of Insight Wins

Here’s the punchline:

The company I’m talking about? When the market turned six months later, they were caught flat-footed.

They couldn’t run new scenarios fast enough. They didn’t know which levers to pull. Operators stopped trusting the Finance numbers.

Eventually? They quietly rebuilt the Excel models. But by then, the credibility damage was done.

Don’t Throw Out the Toolbox

This article took real time to write because I want more CFOs and operators to see through the “modernization theater” that’s infecting too many Finance teams.

If you found value in it, please share.

And if you want to go deeper—whether it’s modernizing your modeling stack, building faster scenario engines, or up-leveling your team’s strategic impact—I offer 1:1 consulting for Finance pros ready to level up. DM me if you want to talk.

And I’ll leave you with this question:

If your board asked for three new downside scenarios today—could your team deliver by end of week?

If that makes you sweat—it’s time to fix it.

Here’s the part nobody wants to say out loud: if your dashboard can’t be broken down, rebuilt, and questioned in real time, it’s not a decision-making tool. It’s a slide.

And that’s why smart finance teams start in Excel.

Not because Excel is perfect—it isn’t. But because Excel is flexible, auditable, accessible, and brutally honest. The moment a number is wrong, it’s staring you in the face. No animations. No filters hiding the rot. Just you, the logic, and the truth.

Here are four tactical reasons why building your dashboards in Excel first isn’t just a good idea—it’s essential.

1. Excel Forces You to Know Your Inputs

Most dashboards are built backwards. People start with what they want to see—ARR, CAC, burn multiples, runway—and then go hunt down data to make the visuals work. It’s upside-down logic.

In Excel, you start with raw data. Not cleaned. Not summarized. Just ugly CSVs that reflect the actual messiness of your systems. And in building your dashboard from that mess, you’re forced to:

• Map the data lineage—where it came from, what it means
• Build intermediate calculations you can actually trace
• Audit assumptions on the spot (before they become permanent)

By the time the dashboard is done, it’s not just pretty—it’s yours. You understand how every number got there because you fought for it. That’s not a dashboard. That’s institutional memory.

Let me give you a real one: At a previous company, we rolled out a slick, vendor-built dashboard to track gross margin by SKU. Looked amazing—until a VP noticed that gross margin had magically doubled in Q4. Panic. Meetings. Finger-pointing. Turns out someone was pulling “net revenue” from one sheet and “COGS” from another in two completely different time zones. We found the issue—but only after rebuilding the logic in Excel from scratch. That’s when I learned: if you don’t know what’s under the hood, the dashboard is just window dressing.

2. Real-Time Flexibility When the CFO (Inevitably) Asks “Can You Just…”

Anyone who’s been in finance for more than 15 minutes knows this move:

You present a clean, polished dashboard. The CFO leans in, squints, and says: “Can you just add margin % by region for last quarter—but only for enterprise deals?”

The $80K BI tool freezes. Your developer isn’t in the room. Everyone stares.

But in Excel?

• You copy a tab
• Adjust the filter logic
• Rewrite a couple of SUMIFs
• And you have the answer before the CFO finishes sipping their coffee

Flexibility wins. Especially in meetings where questions shift and expectations bend. Excel is the only tool that lets finance adapt in real time without logging a ticket.

3. Version Control and Audit Trail Without the Bureaucracy

BI tools have audit logs. Excel has something better: visible logic.

You can see:

• The cell formulas
• The assumptions
• The actual values
• The exact moment where someone forced a hardcoded number (and why)

There’s a reason auditors still love Excel: it doesn’t hide the sausage-making.

Here’s a simple breakdown of what Excel lets you track in a way most tools can’t:

It’s not about being anti-tech. It’s about using the tool that makes your thinking visible. In Excel, your logic is on the table. And that makes it easier to defend under pressure.

4. It Makes Transitioning to BI Easier, Not Harder

Here’s the part the software sales reps don’t tell you: a good Excel dashboard is the blueprint for a great BI build.

When you start in Excel:

• You’ve already validated the KPIs
• You know the edge cases
• You’ve tested the audience reactions
• You’ve iterated through five versions in two weeks because the COO wanted a different revenue split

That means when you do transition to a formal dashboard, you’re not building from theory—you’re translating from practice.

Every BI team I’ve worked with moves faster when there’s a solid Excel prototype in hand. It reduces dev time, cuts feedback loops, and avoids the “that’s not what we meant” trap.

Excel first isn’t a rejection of technology. It’s a handshake between reality and readiness.

Dashboards Aren’t the Point—Decisions Are

Most execs don’t want another dashboard. They want clarity. They want context. They want answers. And those answers live somewhere between the ERP dump and the Monday morning forecast review.

If you build in Excel first, you’re forcing the conversation to happen at the right altitude. You’re not asking what colors or fonts look best. You’re asking: “What assumptions drive this model? What happens if they break?”

And that’s where the real value is.

I wrote this because I’ve seen too many smart teams get burned by overbuilding too early—mistaking presentation for process. If you found this helpful, please share it. I put real time into getting this right because I think finance should be simpler, not sexier.

And if you’ve got questions, feedback, or just want to compare broken dashboard horror stories, my DMs are open.

Here’s a final twist to get you thinking: What if the future of finance isn’t about building faster dashboards—but slower thinking?

Are you building tools to look smart—or to be smart under pressure?