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:

• Ensuring there is a 3-way P&L, balance sheet and cash flow. This is especially important where finance needs to be raised, or plans need to be made within cash constraints.
• Virtually impossible to check formulae do actually work as expected across the whole model
• Extra trouble adding up various entities reliably, be they departments, business units or companies (consolidation)
• Difficulty when sales need to be looked at in a number of dimensions, such as territory, market, product variants etc
• Issues with allowing multi-user access
• Confusion trying to deal with versions as the planning process develops

It is therefore preferable to use a system made specifically for the job. Something which is sufficiently flexible to handle each business and its needs as they change over time, yet provides a strong multi-user platform.

Systems available for small and medium sized businesses were no match for those affordable by large businesses. Now strong cloud systems are becoming available at a price that also makes them attractive to medium and small businesses. These systems not only address the issues above, but provide benefits such as remote access, encryption, automatic backup and disaster recovery.

If you would like to talk about these options, do contact me by email at challisc @ camwells.co.uk or by phone on +44(0)1628 632914

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