Matej Trbara, Co-Founder, Farseer
Finance professionals have a complicated relationship with Excel. On one hand, it is one of the most useful business tools ever created. It helps teams model scenarios, interrogate data, build forecasts and turn fragmented information into something leaders can actually use. I’ve spent many hours in spreadsheets myself, building formulas, solving problems and bringing structure to complexity. This is not an argument against Excel. Far from it.
The problem is not the tool itself, but what businesses have come to expect from it. Spreadsheets have moved from an analysis tool to the operational backbone of finance teams, even at large global enterprises. They now sit at the centre of budgeting, forecasting, reporting, reconciliation and planning – processes that are far too important, complex and fast-moving to depend on static files, manual updates and fragile version control.
That shift is taking a toll. With one in three finance professionals quitting within their first year, the profession has a retention problem that should worry every business leader. Finance is meant to be a strategic function, where commercial insight, operational data and future planning come together. But instead, skilled people spend their days chasing numbers, copying and pasting figures, reconciling mismatched reports and working out which version of a spreadsheet is the right one.
That is not just inefficient; it is demoralising.
The hidden cost
When businesses talk about finance transformation, particularly in the age of rapid AI adoption, the conversation usually starts with productivity. How can teams close the month faster? How can forecasts be updated more frequently? How can reports reach the board sooner?
Those are important questions, but they only tell part of the story. The bigger issue, given the industry’s retention problem, is what manual and heavily administrative finance work does to the people expected to carry it out.
A finance professional does not enter the profession to fix broken links, check spreadsheet formulas or stitch together reports from disconnected systems. They are trained to analyse performance, challenge assumptions, advise business leaders and help shape strategy. That is the work that gives the role meaning.
In many organisations, the infrastructure around finance makes that work harder than it should be. Data sits across different tools. Each business unit uses its own template. Forecasts are updated manually. Reports rely on information being extracted, cleaned, checked and re-entered by hand. By the time finance has assembled a reliable picture of what is happening, the business and its operating environment have already moved on.
This creates a constant pressure loop. Leadership teams want faster answers, and finance teams want to provide them. But the systems underneath are too fragmented to support the pace now required. The result is longer hours, repetitive work and a growing sense that finance is being asked to deliver strategic value with administrative tools.
Why spreadsheets create bottlenecks
Spreadsheets are flexible, familiar and powerful. That is why they became so embedded in finance teams. But the same qualities that make them useful for individual analysis make them risky as the foundation for enterprise planning.
A spreadsheet is easy to change, share and duplicate, but hard to govern and control. In a small team, that is manageable. In a large business operating across borders and time zones, it quickly becomes a significant problem.
Planning and reporting depend on trust. Leaders need to know that the numbers they are looking at are current, consistent and true to the reality of the business. Finance needs confidence that the data behind those numbers has not been manually altered, duplicated or pulled from an outdated file. That’s why every reporting cycle becomes an exercise in verification before analysis can even begin.
From the outside, the process looks functional. From the inside, it is fragile.
Finance cannot become more strategic if it is trapped in admin
The role of finance has changed dramatically. Businesses now expect finance teams to be more forward-looking, more commercially involved and more responsive to change. That expectation is right. Finance should be central to strategic decision-making.
But there is a contradiction at the heart of many organisations. They want finance to operate as a strategic partner, while continuing to rely on processes that keep finance trapped in manual administration.
This also has consequences for recruitment and retention. Younger finance professionals are entering the workforce with expectations shaped by modern technology, automation and connected data. If their experience of finance is dominated by repetitive spreadsheet work and fragmented reporting cycles, the profession quickly becomes less attractive because the work lacks the meaning and impact they were promised.
Many businesses respond to this challenge by investing in dashboards. That can help to a point, but will not solve the underlying problem. A dashboard is only as good as the data and processes behind it, otherwise the business has simply placed a more polished interface on top of the same fragile foundation.
True finance transformation must go deeper. It means creating a connected planning environment where data flows from core business systems, assumptions are transparent, ownership is clear and teams can collaborate around one reliable version of the truth.
Building a finance function people want to stay in
The future of finance should not be defined by doing more with less, which usually means asking already stretched teams to absorb more pressure without changing the conditions around them.
A healthier future is one where finance can do better work with better foundations. That requires investment in technology, but also a shift in mindset. Resilience should not depend on people manually holding broken processes together.
If organisations want to retain talented finance professionals, they must give them work worth staying for. That means freeing them from repetitive manual processes and building finance functions that are more connected and sustainable.
Not because spreadsheets are bad, but because people are too valuable to be used as the glue between them.
