Most of what you said only applies when the tasks are accounting related. There's a lot more to Excel, and a lot more than that to R. And just like, in account

Most of what you said only applies when the tasks are accounting related. There's a lot more to Excel, and a lot more than that to R. And just like, in accounting, you're not going to get the CFO to choose R over Excel, in many circles involving data analysis and statistics you won't get to choose anything but R. Also you don't need an interactive front end for R any more than you need an interactive front end for any other programming language. The scope of use is too large to allow for a single GUI. There are some packages that provide a GUI for specific purposes, like rattle, which provides an interface for common data mining tasks and models. I'd you want a pretty good spreadsheet GUI for viewing and modifying data, you can use rhandsontable. Just a few examples. Replacing Excel with R isn't necessary and I think would miss the point & relative strengths of the different tools. Recognizing where each tool is better suited for your needs, and if R is worth the learning curve for your specific needs, is what is important.