Escaping Excel Hell - Solutions for Planning and Forecasting

Financial planning is key for any business. Each business is different, so a flexible system is required.

For this reason Excel is often the natural choice for the job. But anything more than a very simple model becomes very difficult to build, and certainly difficult to maintain.

There can be issues with aspects such as: [...read more...]

Escaping Excel Hell - Budgeting

Budgeting. A word that strikes horror into every finance department and every corporate manager.

For smaller businesses budgeting is often a totally alien concept. So sadly is cash flow forecasting. For them a simple Excel spreadsheet could transform their business, giving them forward visibility of issues and the time to avoid therm.  But as they grow ....

Many larger businesses still use Excel. Imagine running 300 cost centres across a £250m business that had changed from manufacturing to product/service projects in just a few short years. I've seen it and helped replace it: [...read more...]