2 ms·

I think you misunderstand 'workflows' in business. This is not a case of ingesting a large amount of data, transform, analyse etc. A normal finance team gets

I think you misunderstand 'workflows' in business. This is not a case of ingesting a large amount of data, transform, analyse etc. A normal finance team gets constant one off requests for information. Download something from the ERP, lookup against something else, pivot it by department. Then you get a follow up for the same but with x excluded, but they need it in 10 minutes before a meeting. Excel is great for that. Then there are the dozens of files behind accounting records. Take a Fixed Asset Register (since it is at the top of the balance sheet), a list of your assets and their depreciation schedule. Maybe your ERP doesn't have one, or your company didn't buy that module, or you have a special class off asset that doesn't fit in it. Maybe they coded it for one country, but in your country the rules are different, so it ends up in Excel. Then maybe you have a bank account and you have cheques that are posted to your ledger but have not cleared the actual bank yet. Then you have items on your real account that you couldn't post yet, maybe someone paid you with no reference. So you keep a little Excel reconciliation to check. Then inventory, maybe the ERP didn't split it in the way your consolidation needs it, so you transform the data in Excel and reconcile it back Then you have all the things that belong in this accounting period but haven't been billed yet, so you have a running list of accruals and when they will reverse. Then you have all the things that are posted in this period but relate to later periods, so you keep a prepayments file. Maybe both of these spit out a journal to upload back to the ERP and reconcile the balance. Then you get a download of the payroll for the month, but you need to rearrange it into net pay, gross pay, taxes paid by the employee, taxes paid by the employer, pension contributions... then you have to split it by cost centre too. This could be coded, but it is different in every country... and the cost centres keep changing, and the analysis head office wants keeps changing... so it goes in Excel. Then I want to verify that the system posted the correct absorption to inventory, so I paste in an inventory report and a TB and last month's reconciliation updates. I can code, but I can't maintain 100 pieces of software that change all the time. I also need all the people in the chain to be able to follow it.... And yes, finance people know how to apply the famous 'checks and balances' to keep out most classes of mistakes....and to detect the same mistakes made by the engineered 'proper software' we have to work with.

oneplane 2y ago
I doubt I misunderstand it since this is what I get paid for. I'm also not suggesting this is a case of large data, ETL or anything like that. (what I'm writing about is people using it for that anyway which is what we have other systems for and they should not be doing that) Our finance teams use excel too, but not as the 'do everything' tool that the article and plenty of comments here makes it out to be. They use it as a scratchpad, and it works well. But it doesn't contain ground truth, ever. This one perhaps matches with 99% of the rant I wrote: > Then inventory, maybe the ERP didn't split it in the way your consolidation needs it, so you transform the data in Excel and reconcile it back While we primarily deal with Dynamics (AX and 365), pretty much everything fits in there. In some cases the clunky UI makes it slow to do some transformations, even if just to check something to (as you wrote, verify the software did what it was supposed to do), and then you dump a couple of thousand rows out, do your work, and either are happy with what was verified or load some transformed data back in (this hasn't really been needed as we revised our rules as to data locations a few years ago, not in terms of "do this or you get fired" but in terms of "please make sure that when external systems outside of your team streams data in or out of the ERP, the chance of it not being correct is as low as you can get it"). As I wrote in some other reply (which some people appear to disagree with as if it's something I made up), my issue is with the horror cases of people building their own mini-ERP in a set of excel workbooks, or not using shared systems for data sharing and governance but instead emailing files around. Maybe it's the little learning being a dangerous thing, or feeling confident in a tool also giving people false confidence to perform actions that really should not be done that way.
- jimnotgym 2y ago
  > While we primarily deal with Dynamics (AX and 365), pretty much everything fits in there I don't have much experience with Dynamics. My experience is mostly Oracle, SAP and Netsuite plus some bespoke. I agree modern systems are very flexible. Everything could fit in there eventually if you are willing to pay, and willing to wait. But reporting can't wait. The company I work for has 1000 factories, many sales offices. They use many different ERPs. I heard our division has 23! We were all acquired at different times, . My unit was acquired by a group that subsequently sold a part of itself. They are constantly trying to standardise on one system, but then acquire something else with more different systems. We get around this by using a consolidation system. Export, transform, load of only top line metrics..All via Excel, which is fully integrated into the consolidation system. The consolidation doesn't preserve line level data, so if someone needs it they have to ask for a spreadsheet. The IT just never catches up with the business. The last mega Corp I worked for was simpler and more standardised, but still used different ERPs in different divisions. We were acquired by a group that was acquired by mega Corp, because they wanted a product a different division made. We were shoehorned in. We were on SAP already, but had to move to theirs...took 18 months to get to us. In the mean time...we used a consolidation system... via Excel

oneplane 2y ago

I doubt I misunderstand it since this is what I get paid for. I'm also not suggesting this is a case of large data, ETL or anything like that. (what I'm writing about is people using it for that anyway which is what we have other systems for and they should not be doing that) Our finance teams use excel too, but not as the 'do everything' tool that the article and plenty of comments here makes it out to be. They use it as a scratchpad, and it works well. But it doesn't contain ground truth, ever. This one perhaps matches with 99% of the rant I wrote: > Then inventory, maybe the ERP didn't split it in the way your consolidation needs it, so you transform the data in Excel and reconcile it back While we primarily deal with Dynamics (AX and 365), pretty much everything fits in there. In some cases the clunky UI makes it slow to do some transformations, even if just to check something to (as you wrote, verify the software did what it was supposed to do), and then you dump a couple of thousand rows out, do your work, and either are happy with what was verified or load some transformed data back in (this hasn't really been needed as we revised our rules as to data locations a few years ago, not in terms of "do this or you get fired" but in terms of "please make sure that when external systems outside of your team streams data in or out of the ERP, the chance of it not being correct is as low as you can get it"). As I wrote in some other reply (which some people appear to disagree with as if it's something I made up), my issue is with the horror cases of people building their own mini-ERP in a set of excel workbooks, or not using shared systems for data sharing and governance but instead emailing files around. Maybe it's the little learning being a dangerous thing, or feeling confident in a tool also giving people false confidence to perform actions that really should not be done that way.

jimnotgym 2y ago
> While we primarily deal with Dynamics (AX and 365), pretty much everything fits in there I don't have much experience with Dynamics. My experience is mostly Oracle, SAP and Netsuite plus some bespoke. I agree modern systems are very flexible. Everything could fit in there eventually if you are willing to pay, and willing to wait. But reporting can't wait. The company I work for has 1000 factories, many sales offices. They use many different ERPs. I heard our division has 23! We were all acquired at different times, . My unit was acquired by a group that subsequently sold a part of itself. They are constantly trying to standardise on one system, but then acquire something else with more different systems. We get around this by using a consolidation system. Export, transform, load of only top line metrics..All via Excel, which is fully integrated into the consolidation system. The consolidation doesn't preserve line level data, so if someone needs it they have to ask for a spreadsheet. The IT just never catches up with the business. The last mega Corp I worked for was simpler and more standardised, but still used different ERPs in different divisions. We were acquired by a group that was acquired by mega Corp, because they wanted a product a different division made. We were shoehorned in. We were on SAP already, but had to move to theirs...took 18 months to get to us. In the mean time...we used a consolidation system... via Excel