You might also be interested in
Replies (21)
Please login or register to join the discussion.
It's pretty much like trying to ban the car...
Yes, there are plenty of idiots out there that misuse them but when looked after they provide a useful tool to get from A to B. We'd all prefer to have the financial "helicopters" to do the job but for most of us it's not practical so until a cheaper better alternative is provided Excel, like the car, is here to stay!!
The European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group (EuSpRIG)?
That sounds like a fun job, and they say accountants are boring!
A very timely article. I have just spent a day reworking a clients bookkeepers spreadsheet trying to make some sense and pulling together some sort of accounts.
I'm tired and fed up.
And no.. I couldnt do a bank import into my own software as it would have taken just as long to load, create rules and work through the 4 bank accounts, 3 credit cards, Transferwise account - Euro, dollar and pound going over 3 years.
I'm off for a drink to get myself together to face the final loading onto Taxfiler.
It's not Excel, it is the people that use it! Also, as in everything there are so called Experts who should be deemed amateurs. No Employment Agencies or companies that I know of have any idea how to rate a person's Excel skills.
From an Accountant's perspective the spreadsheet is an electonic copy of a cashbook, TB and, of course from a TB a set of accounts.
People used to make mistakes adding up freehand, that's why we use cross - casting. In spreadsheet we use formulae.
Unfortunately the technical world has advanced so rapidly that a lot of people can't catch up and never will. This is evident now with all the problems that beset our techno advancement. We need a period of consolidation before we move further into unchartered (not always for the good) waters.
So the spreadsheet will stil be with us when we meet the aliens.
before we move further into unchartered (not always for the good) waters.
Sorry, but it is one of my pet peeves because it is so common, even if in this case it is considered an ironical pun. Uncharted waters, i.e. not mapped.
But in this context "unchartered" is almost priceless. Maybe that's what he actually meant?!
Of course the spreadsheet is always being knocked - by those who want to sell other 'solutions'.
Are we to suppose that decimal points don't get misplaced in other software?
.... and what alternative do the knockers suggest for the informal, flexible workings that accountants will always need?
A non-story
I was once working on a problem investigation that required a lot of spreadsheet work. I was assigned a new temp assistant and told that he had excellent Excel skills. But he proved to be sooo sloooow! He was compiling a list of figures and then typing the same figures into calculator to get the total which he then typed at the bottom! He was astonished when I pointed out the SUM function. This sort of thing was common, although this instance was extreme. I suggested that I devise a simple Excel test that we could ask new recruits to complete as part of recruitment, but HR vetoed it saying that such action could land us with legal difficulties - I never did find out just why. In my experience almost every Excel user overestimates their competence. It is only when one gets into the advanced elements of macro programming, complex database functions etc that you realise this. And the worst offenders are senior management who seek to tell those that do know what they are doing how to do it - badly!
It's not just spreadsheets ... back in my old days I remember being on a team of two to check the bid price on a unit trust before the price was put out to the market ... it was not a spreadsheet, it was a simple hand-written table with helpful things like "Add this figure to the previous subtotal" or "subtract the resultant figure from such and such a subtotal", something any accountant could do in the dark without a torch whilst eating his 25p luncheon-voucher sandwich ... but the senior guy (I was merely a young innocent nerd back then ... those were the days!) still just followed exactly what the unit trust manager had done, which was subtract one figure rather than add, despite the clear message that this figure had to be added ... the bid price calculation was duly given the go-ahead, the big Four firm charged its massively inflated fee, and two days later got embroiled in one unholy row when the mistake was spotted. So who needs spreadsheets to create errors?...?!
The thing about spreadsheets is that they are just so easy to start using. By anyone. With no training. Yet they are so powerful. What makes them great is also their achilles heel. They have a very natural tendancy to keep on propagating, and once taken root to grow in complexity. Getting rid of them is not the answer because they are so useful and it won't happen. Blaming the user / creator will not fix the problem either. What is needed perhaps is a way to progress from the spreadsheet once it becomes too critical or complex. I think that the very tight integration between Excel and Power BI could be a step in the right direction. It provides simple ways to manage spreadsheets and their data more robustly as well as migration of linked sheets and PowerPivot models. It is early days and may not solve all spreadsheet issues, but I think it is a very welcome step in the right direction.
Spreadsheets!! Bloody hell what is this 1999?!
Get some decent software and bin the spreadsheets!
Yer and bin books, cards. Don't send letters. etc. etc. Oh yes definitly ban the "wagon wheel"
This article is ideological gibberish!
For as long as there is an array of data that needs exporting from one database to another database, a spreadsheet will always needed to do it manually. It requires human intelligence to remove the garbage from one system before the next system eats it.
For as long as the software industry continues to sell garbageware badly, then spreadsheets are the only useful tool available to the accountant in business and/or in practice.
Even to do away with the spreadsheet in the book-keeping department of a Mittelstand business would require a standardised taxonomy and common API between ALL software vendors - ledgers, billing, timesheets, expense claims, payroll, HRM, inventory, assets, debt management, procurement, authorisation/workflow, document management systems, etc.
And, of course, all of these vendors jealously protect their proprietary databases in the hope that the database design itself locks their business customer "in".
So the common taxonomy and API ain't gonna happen in my lifetime! If ever...!
And thus the spreadsheet will remain the manually-retyped thread that glues fragmented-by-design systems together.
We would concur that recent reports of Excel's demise have been greatly exaggerated. While there are better tools out there for very specific workflows, spreadsheets will continue to be used for anything and everything that cannot easily be done with something off the shelf. Also, IMO the desire for something new with as much power and flexibility as Excel but without the possibility for error is a contradiction in terms - power and flexibility (in any product) are precisely what makes errors feasible.
There is much discussion about best practices, and that's good. But even perfectly authored spreadsheets will cause chaos, the moment they are treated as an enterprise solution and shared with many end-users.
We see several very common use-cases: one is the use of spreadsheets as pricing models. This really falls into the CPQ (configuration-pricing-quoting) category, but while there are some great CPQ solutions out there (like SF.com CPQ), their flexibility cannot match Excel. Companies that sell highly tailored products and services (think insurance, manufacturing, among many others) frequently use Excel for pricing and quoting - nothing else will do the job.
But therein lies the distribution and version control problem some of the comments have alluded to - how do you enable an entire sales team to use a master version of a spreadsheet? There are solutions to this problem, and we (EASA) are one of them. Without turning this into a sales pitch, if interested have a look at some of our case studies here - http://easasoftware.com/case-studies-management-control-excel-configure-....
Our basic approach is to use a thoroughly tested spreadsheet as a logic engine for a web app, built in a no-code environment. This eliminates concerns about version control, security, and audit trail. It also enables data storage - NOT in Excel files on multiple hard disks - but in a database, where it should be.
To conclude - if there is a better tool than Excel for your specific task, use it. If not, and you must use Excel, then search for solutions to at least mitigate the risk.
I forgot to mention ClusterSeven, another excellent risk mitigation tool that works well with EASA.
There is nothing wrong with spreadsheets, though I always advise people, check, check and recheck your formulas.
The fault nearly always lies with the person using Spreadsheets, normally big errors smoke out big idiots out of their depth.
If anyone moans about un-picking errors on Excel, try to un-pick errors on Sage, Quickbooks and the like, double trouble if Vat related errors.