Why Financial Analysts Still Rely on Excel

Ask any financial analyst what tool they can’t live without. There’s a good chance their answer will be the same: Excel.

Sure, technology has advanced. We have powerful Business Intelligence platforms, cloud accounting systems, and automation tools that promise to take us beyond spreadsheets. And yet, when it comes down to day-to-day analysis, Excel still holds its ground. Why? Because it strikes the balance between being universal, practical, and endlessly adaptable.

Let’s take a closer look at why Excel continues to be the preferred platform for financial professionals everywhere.

The Standard Everyone Knows

Excel is quite literally the “default setting” for financial data. It’s a universal standard beyond just corporate finance, but across nearly every industry. Are you creating business valuations, collaborating with auditors, business owners, or colleagues in another department?  Then you can be almost certain that they’ll be able to handle an Excel file. This familiarity keeps communication seamless and ensures analysts spend less time explaining formats and more time interpreting results.

Nearly Every System Plays Nicely With Excel

These days most modern financial and reporting applications are designed to export data into CSV or Excel. So if you’re working with Enterprise Resource Planning data, accounting software, or  third-party analytical tools, the odds are you can pull that information out in Excel format. This one-click export functionality gives analysts a quick way to structure, clean, and analyze data without being locked into the confines of a single software platform.

Linking Data Without the Busywork

One of Excel’s less flashy but highly practical advantages is the ability to link data across workbooks. You can set up external links so that changes in one file flow directly into another, automatically.

For example, suppose you’ve just exported an Income Statement and a Balance Sheet from your accounting system. Instead of constantly reformatting and copying values back and forth, you can create links between these files and your own Excel analysis workbook. Now, any updates made in one automatically refresh in your consolidated analysis file. And this saves hours of manual work while cutting down on errors.

Flexible Enough for Any Format

Financial data doesn’t come in one neat, standardized presentation. Income Statements, Balance Sheets, and management reports often vary in structure across companies and even departments in the same organization. Excel’s flexibility makes it easy to accommodate unique formats while still maintaining consistency in calculations and outputs.

Think of it this way: You can export financial statements into Excel, link them together in a central workbook, and then import that consolidated report into another analytics or visualization tool if needed. Excel acts as both a staging ground and a bridge, letting analysts design their workflow around the business – not the other way around.

This is the way ValuAdder financial worksheets work. Being Excel based they enable you to bring in your data, link statements across multiple sources, and build tailored analysis models without being locked into rigid templates. Then import the data into ValuAdder software with a mouse click. For many business valuation experts, it’s the best of both worlds: the familiarity of Excel’s structure combined with the added efficiency of purpose-built financial tools.

Final Thoughts

Despite the rise of advanced financial platforms, Excel remains the foundation of analysis. It’s reliable, universally understood, and endlessly adaptable. Whether you’re cleaning raw data, linking multiple reports, or tailoring financial statements to match your preferences, Excel makes the process faster and more intuitive.

At the end of the day, analysts don’t depend on Excel out of habit. They do it because it simply works.

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