If the job is to model financial statements to produce a forecast model, to answer questions like * what cash flows can we expect from this business * what wi

If the job is to model financial statements to produce a forecast model, to answer questions like * what cash flows can we expect from this business * what will the profit be in 12 months * what will that do to my balance sheet ... then Excel is still the best tool. Financial statements are usually less than 100 rows each. All the modelling is on a tab, out front where you can print it and sense check it with a highlighter. People on hn often think towards the big data world ( and like the other poster I would exhaust sql before anything else for ad hoc analysis), but there is a huge amount of work done that is more like my use case than yours.