It was the Spreadsheet's fault.....

Using spreadsheets for budgeting and planning is not ideal. Do any of these sound familiar?

1. The Frankenspreadsheet: Yes, you started out well-organized and disciplined with your beautiful template but then once you sent it out into the world, something happened. Like a children's game where the original whispered secret turns into something completely different, your template gets changed, which turns into a massive headache when you have to consolidate the information.
    
2. The Dodgy Spreadsheet: While the figures in a spreadsheet may look reliable, when you dig under the surface you can uncover all kinds of horrors - like incorrectly entered formulae, formulae not copied across the right rows and columns, and formulae that aren’t right for the desired calculation. Apparently, an analysis of 9,120 spreadsheets from the archive of failed energy giant Enron revealed that almost one-quarter (24%) of them contained errors.
    
3. The 'It made sense at the time' Spreadsheet: One of the great things about spreadsheets is how easy they are to customise, it is also one of the awful things. If you have ever been on the receiving end of hundreds of customized planning spreadsheets, you'll know what a challenge it can be to figure out what information the person was trying to convey.
    
4. The 'Final Final Edited' Spreadsheet: When multiple people are saving their own versions of a spreadsheet, sometimes to their own local hard drives, it’s frighteningly easy to lose track of which version has the most accurate, up to date information.
    

Life is too short. There is a better way. Check out Oracle's Planning and Budgeting Cloud Solution today and read the ebook Confessions of a Finance Manager to learn how to put spreadsheet confusion behind you.