For Budgeting, Why not use Excel?
Posted by
Tom Salzer on Tue, Jul 05, 2011 @ 11:18 AM
So here’s how the process generally goes… One person in one department develops a budget spreadsheet. It looks good. The organization sees that there may be a fit for other departments as well. So, the spreadsheet expands to accommodate the new departments. Then the next step is to consolidate across departments for a version of the budget that pulls the whole organization together. Linking formulas get written and it’s all good.
Then the inevitable questions arise… Can we make a change here? Can we add another row? Wouldn’t it be great if we could break up sales into more lines? Maintenance is impossible and everything breaks.
The result…. Excel Chaos!
Then the search begins for new budgeting software... Even before the budgeting software gets purchased, time consuming software evaluations take place. Then, worse than the price of the software, is the training. Most users know Excel, but a new budgeting system is a very different story.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Excel can really do the job. Your organization has many skilled Excel users and developers. Why reinvent the wheel? Using Excel coupled with an overlay that eliminates the chaos can work.
Imagine a budgeting world using Excel without all of the hassles… Imagine using your internal skills rather than relying on new expensive software.
ExcelCube makes it easy to consolidate Excel files across locations and departments. Prior to using ExcelCube, our customers struggled with rolling up Excel files across locations and department without linking formulas. With ExcelCube, they still use Excel but without the pain of fixing and maintaining their reporting systems. The end result is Excel files with Consolidated Data.
Take a closer look at ExcelCube (www.excelcube.com).