I need to disclose something before we begin. I like Excel. A lot. I’ve spent enough of my career in Excel that I’m probably entitled to some kind of common-law marriage. So when somebody tells me Finance needs to “get out of spreadsheets,” I don’t immediately nod thoughtfully and start scheduling software demos. I usually […]
I like software. I also like buying things. Amazon has documented this extensively. So you might assume I’d be very supportive when someone tells me their Finance team needs a new FP&A platform. Not necessarily. In fact, one of the first questions I’d ask is probably the least exciting one: What problem are you trying […]
What would you do if you walked into a five-year-old company with more than 170 legal entities, roughly 10,000 budget lines, no FP&A planning system, department heads who had never worked with a structured P&L, and tax rules capable of changing while you were still building the budget? I think I’d need coffee first. Probably […]
Why I tested ChatGPT on account reconciliations Reconciliations are the part of accounting that quietly eats time. Matching bank feeds against the general ledger, hunting down timing differences, and tracing stale checks — it’s thankless but essential. For years, I did this manually in Excel. I’d lean on VLOOKUP, COUNTIF, and conditional formatting, and it […]
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. […]
Let’s not pretend anyone enjoys Excel. You don’t crack open a spreadsheet because life is bursting with meaning. You open Excel the way a mid-century housewife opened gin at 2pm: quietly, with dread, and because someone just asked about KPIs again. So today, we’re doing something useful with it. We’re going to use Excel to […]
You don’t forget the first time you’re left in charge of someone else’s chaos. For me, it was a suburban living room full of Goldfish crumbs and sticky Legos. I was 13. My older sister—a seasoned babysitter with a Rolodex of wealthy neighborhood clients—was passing the torch. I asked the question every first-timer asks.“What do […]
By Someone Who’s Been Held Hostage by a Circular Reference Since 2020 At some point in the past ten years—no one’s exactly sure when—therapy got outsourced to Google Sheets and SaaS dashboards. The budget got cut, the benefits evaporated, and suddenly your emotional stability was being maintained by a locked cell and a conditional format. […]
Running your entire FP&A process in Excel is like flying a commercial airline with Google Maps. It’ll get you off the ground. But you’ll crash the minute conditions change. Let’s get something straight:This is not an anti-Excel piece. This is a pro-sanity one. Excel is the most powerful modeling tool in finance. No question. But […]
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