Why Spreadsheets Can’t Keep Up with Modern Finance Teams
For decades, spreadsheets have been the go-to tool for finance professionals. They’re flexible, accessible, and powerful… for a while. But as your organisation scales, and financial planning becomes more complex, spreadsheets can become a major obstacle.
Let’s break down the strengths and weaknesses, specifically through the lens of today’s finance teams.
The Strengths: Why Finance Teams Love Spreadsheets
Before we critique them, let’s acknowledge the reasons spreadsheets have become foundational:
Highly customisable
You can shape a spreadsheet however you like. Whether it’s a quick cash flow model, a headcount plan, or a P&L scenario, Excel or Sheets can handle it, at least in the early stages.
Intuitive structure
It’s rows, columns, and tabs. Almost every finance professional knows how to navigate, calculate, and visualise with a spreadsheet.
Flexible modelling
Need to build a what-if analysis, run amortisation schedules, or track budget vs. actuals? Spreadsheets can do it all without needing developers or complex tooling.
The Breaking Point: Scaling Complexity
The trouble starts when your financial operations begin to scale. Let’s say you’re budgeting across:
Multiple cost centres
Five lines of service
Several employee grades
Different departments
Planning by month or quarter
At that point, you're dealing with four to six dimensions of data and that’s being conservative.
Excel's Hidden Limitation: Only Three Dimensions
Excel essentially gives you three axes to work with:
Rows
Columns
Tabs
When finance teams try to model multi-dimensional scenarios, they’re forced to flatten complexity into a 2D grid, or manage a web of interconnected files. It gets messy, fast.
The Real Problem: Version Chaos and Time Lost
Here’s where things get painful for finance:
Multiple versions of spreadsheets get passed around.
Teams work on different assumptions without knowing it.
Consolidation takes days or weeks.
Errors creep in and go unnoticed.
Audit trails disappear.
In some companies, it takes six months to build a yearly budget. That’s half your fiscal year gone just planning it.
And yes, even in 2025, large, recognisable companies still build financial plans entirely in Excel. But they’re also the ones struggling to respond quickly to market shifts.
The Bottom Line: Spreadsheets Aren’t Financial Systems
Spreadsheets aren’t inherently bad—but they’re not built for modern FP&A.
Finance teams today need tools that handle:
Multi-dimensional planning
Version control and collaboration
Real-time updates across departments
Governance and audibility
Scenario modelling that doesn’t break with one wrong cell reference
It’s Time to Evolve
If you’re still managing your financial planning in spreadsheets, ask yourself:
How many hours (or weeks) are we spending on manual consolidation?
How confident are we in the numbers when they change last-minute?
Are we planning, or are we just reconciling files?
It might be time to shift from “spreadsheet mode” to a platform built for finance at scale.
Because the business is growing. Your models should grow with it.
Do you need some guidance growing your business? You can schedule a call today with one of our consultants. Book here