What's the most common forecasting and budgeting tool? Undoubtably Excel. Whilst it is a powerful and useful tool, that will inevitably be loaded on every "contributor's" PC, forecasting is probably the main example of Excel Hell.
Whilst I was in industry, newly qualified, I was compiling the annual budget and managed to miss out two employees from the SUM function for their department's salary expense. Their annual salary was more than half the total company contingency. I had to explain this to the Board and the departmental manager in every month's management accounts commentary, until I managed to get agreement to formally use the contingency for the purpose. Ouch, that was painful! [...read more...]
