The Financial Controller and CFO's Toolkit, 3rd Edition

Chapter 4Future-Ready Technologies

OVERVIEW

Many finance teams have underinvested in twenty-first-century systems and relied too heavily on spreadsheets. Far too much time and money has been reinvested in upgrading the general ledger (G/L) and far too little on monthly reporting, forecasting, budgeting, accounts payable, drill-down, and consolidation software. This chapter answers the questions “Which systems should I invest in?” and “How should I go about it?”

Far too much money is reinvested in upgrading the general ledger (G/L). In a modern company, the G/L only does the basic task of holding the financial numbers for the year. Monthly reporting, latest forecast numbers, budget numbers, and even the drill-down facility available to budget holders often reside outside the G/L package, so why reinvest?

BAN SPREADSHEETS FROM CORE FINANCE ROUTINES

Spreadsheets have no place in forecasting, budgeting, and many other core financial routines. Spreadsheets were not designed for many of the tasks they are currently used to accomplish. In fact, at workshops I often remark in jest that many people, if they worked at NASA, would try to use Microsoft Excel for the US space program, and many would believe that it would be appropriate to do so.

A spreadsheet is a great tool for creating static graphs for a report or designing and testing a reporting template. It is not, and never should have been, a building block for your company's finance systems. Two accounting firms have pointed ...