The consolidation
Export each entity, paste into a template, apply eliminations by hand. Fine at two entities, fragile at four, a genuine reporting risk at eight.
By current system
Every finance function runs on spreadsheets and most of that is fine. The problem is the specific workbook that has stopped being an analysis tool and become infrastructure — the consolidation, the revenue schedule, the WIP report — unversioned, unaudited, and understood by exactly one person.
Tell us what it does and who maintains it. We will say whether it is a risk worth fixing.
The situation
Spreadsheets are excellent for analysis and poor as systems of record. These six are the ones we most often find doing the second job.
Export each entity, paste into a template, apply eliminations by hand. Fine at two entities, fragile at four, a genuine reporting risk at eight.
ASC 606 maintained by hand. It is usually not wrong; it is unverifiable, and in diligence those cost the same.
Percent complete, earned revenue, over- and under-billing rebuilt monthly. Your surety and your bank both read it and one person can produce it.
Cost, accumulated depreciation, method, and life outside the ledger, agreeing with the trial balance by convention rather than by construction.
Department or project reporting reconstructed each month because the dimensions were never captured at the transaction.
Frequently the most complex workbook in the company, driving real payments, maintained by whoever built it and understood by nobody else.
Not complexity, and not size. Three questions, and if the answer to any is no, the workbook has become a risk rather than a tool.
Replace the ones above — the workbooks producing figures that go into statements, to lenders, to boards, or to auditors. Those need version history, review, and a trail from output back to source transactions.
Leave the analysis alone. Scenario modelling, one-off investigations, the pricing model somebody built for a specific negotiation — spreadsheets are genuinely the right tool for those and replacing them with rigid software makes finance worse rather than better. Any vendor promising to eliminate spreadsheets entirely is describing a product nobody wants.
Consolidation first if you have multiple entities, because it is the one with the largest downside and the clearest fix. Revenue recognition first if a raise, sale, or audit is on the horizon, because that is what gets examined and priced. WIP first if you are a contractor, because your surety reads it.
In every case the sequence is the same: capture the underlying data properly, produce the figure from that data, and run the workbook alongside for two or three periods until they agree. Cutting straight over is how a bad month becomes an unexplained variance.
Questions
Tell us what it does and who maintains it. Three questions is usually enough for a straight answer.