Five EXCEL Failures That Cause Your Financial Managers Fits

If you are exporting data to Excel, your ERP Implementation is broken.

There’s no other way categorize it. If any of the following scenarios apply, you need ERP PROS MS Excel Exit Strategy.

The Excel Habit: Users export a P&L and Balance Sheet to Excel to add custom headers, "percentage of revenue" columns, and specific font styling for board presentations.
The Intacct Solution: Use Financial Report Groups combined with Columnar Computations.
- How: Within the Financial Report Writer, add columns for "Percent of Total Revenue" or "Variance %." Use the "Format" tab to set specific rounding, bolding, and underlining. By creating a "Report Group," you can generate a single PDF packet that looks professional and updates automatically each month.

The Excel Habit: Finance teams export trial balances from five different entities into one workbook to manually net out intercompany "Due To/Due From" accounts and handle currency conversions.
The Intacct Solution: Use the Global Consolidations Module with Elimination Entities.
- How: Map all subsidiaries to a shared "Top Level" view. Use the Financial Report Writer to create a report filtered by the "Consolidated" level. Intacct will automatically handle the currency translation (using weighted averages or spot rates) and strip out intercompany transactions using automated elimination journals.

The Excel Habit: Users export "Actuals" from Intacct and manually paste them next to "Budget" numbers maintained in a separate spreadsheet to calculate variances.
The Intacct Solution: Use Budget Books and Reporting Periods.
- How: Upload your budget directly into Intacct using the Budget Header tool. In the Financial Report Writer, add a column for "Budget" and a third column for "Variance (Calculated)." You can even use Color Coding (Red/Green) in the report writer to highlight variances that exceed a certain percentage.

The Excel Habit: Managers export a giant "General Ledger Detail" and use Pivot Tables to filter spend by Department, Project, or Employee to see if a specific team is over-budget.
The Intacct Solution: Use Dimension Filters and Dashboard Components.
- How: Instead of a static report, build a Performance Card on a Department Head’s dashboard. Use the Financial Report Writer to build a "Spend by Dimension" report and set the "Dimension Filter" to "Prompt." This allows the user to filter the report themselves in real-time without ever needing an export.

The Excel Habit: Users export total rent or utility costs and use Excel formulas to manually re-allocate those costs across different departments based on headcount or square footage.
The Intacct Solution: Use Dynamic Allocations.
- How: Set up an Allocation Definition in Sage Intacct. You can tell the system to take the total in a "Pool" account and distribute it across the "Department" dimension based on a "Statistical Account" (like Headcount). The Financial Report Writer then reflects these "allocated" costs automatically, showing the true net income of every department.