I like creating reports in Excel

Microsoft Excel® continues to be the application of choice for accounting professionals worldwide. From income statements and complex cash flow analysis, to multi-level budget input templates, an estimated 93% of organizational reports end up in Microsoft Excel®. Initially released in the late 80’s, by the early 90’s Excel had dethroned IBM’s Lotus 1-2-3 as king of the spreadsheet programs. For many of today’s accounting professionals, Microsoft Excel® is all they have ever known, and it’s a comfortable environment.

Excel is also a very flexible and powerful solution. From simple tasks like creating charts and graphs, to creating complex pivot tables and customizing with Macros and VBA programming, Excel has become an increasingly robust application. Many organizations pull external data directly into the application by utilizing data connectors like ODC and DDE.

Recognizing the advantages of business intelligence within the application, Power Pivot was released as part of the overall Microsoft BI strategy. As Microsoft continues to further integrate Excel with SQL Server®, SharePoint, and their Dynamics ERP (GP, NAV, AX, SL), it would appear that they intend for it to continue to be the reporting tool of choice for the foreseeable future.

But like my hair cut in the 80’s, Excel is not perfect.

For many organizations, the need to create and keep track of multiple versions of spreadsheets has become a nearly unmanageable task. The process of emailing templates back and forth and collaborating by telephone is time consuming and inefficient.

Data pulls are great for getting information in to a spreadsheet, but it is difficult for finance and senior managers to access the underlying details or different views without putting in a call to IT.

Finally, IT departments and privacy officers are beginning to crack down on creating reports in Excel due to the inherent security risks.

So what’s an Excel loving accountant to do? Thankfully, there are a number of solutions available that allow users to have the best of both worlds. The freedom of continuing to work within the comfortable confines of Excel, with the security, flexibility, and visibility demanded by current corporate governance. Of course, here at the Vivid Reports we are partial to a particular solution.