Five signs that your Excel model has become too important

When has your Excel model become too important?

The key question is not whether Excel is good or bad. Excel is an excellent tool for developing business and financial models.

The real question is: At what point do one or more files become the wrong place for business-critical data and calculations?

Five typical signs:

1. There is one person without whom nothing works anymore.
2. Nobody can say with certainty which version is correct.
3. Someone questions the figures and providing evidence of how they were calculated becomes impossible.
4. Month-end closing, planning or reporting involve a great deal of manual work every time.
5. The model keeps growing and becoming more complex, but nobody dares to redesign it from the ground up.

What follows from this?

Does that mean you have to throw away your models and replace them with rigid off-the-shelf software? Have custom software developed? Or use AI to build a new application through “vibe coding”?

Perhaps your models simply need a better place: one that tracks versions, manages data centrally, enforces access permissions, makes changes traceable and maintains documentation.

A place where your business teams can continue working much as they are used to in Excel.