Reimagining Spreadsheets: Stop Assembling Data and Start Analyzing It

For decades, Excel has been the tool of choice for financial institutions.

Despite countless software innovations, banks and credit unions still rely heavily on spreadsheets for budgeting, board reporting, forecasting, profitability analysis, strategic planning, and executive reporting – and honestly, that’s not a bad thing.

The reliance on Excel’s familiar interface makes its widespread use perfectly understandable.

Yet the industry data tells an important story.

The Problem Isn’t Excel – It’s the Process Behind It

A 2024 review of more than three decades of spreadsheet quality research found that 94% of business spreadsheets used in decision-making contained errors. Many were minor, but others had the potential to influence financial reporting, pricing, forecasting, and strategic decisions.

The issue isn’t Excel itself; it’s relying on Excel to gather, validate, reconcile, and maintain complex financial data from multiple sources.

History has shown just how costly spreadsheet-driven errors can be. In one of the most-cited examples in the financial industry, JPMorgan’s “London Whale” incident involved a spreadsheet-based risk model containing formula and manual process errors that contributed to a loss exceeding $6 billion.

At the same time, spreadsheet dependency remains extremely common. According to the 2025 AFP FP&A Benchmarking Survey, 96% of FP&A professionals still use spreadsheets for planning and 93% for reporting.

The lesson here isn’t that you should abandon Excel. It’s that critical financial processes shouldn’t begin there.

When budgeting, forecasting, profitability analysis, strategic planning, and financial reporting all start with manually collecting data from multiple systems, organizations increase the risk of inconsistencies, formula errors, version-control issues, and time-consuming reconciliation efforts.

So, instead of replacing Excel, how do we improve the process behind it?

How Manual Data Preparation Creates Unnecessary Risk

Looking back to my time working in banking, one common yet time-consuming process stands out: each month, a customer service representative prepared an executive reporting package for the bank president. The spreadsheet contained key information such as balance sheet totals, income statement results, employee counts, delinquency statistics, and numerous performance ratios.

The challenge wasn’t creating the spreadsheet, but rather pulling information from multiple locations – the core, investment, and HR systems, along with various departmental and borrowing reports. Hours were spent gathering files, extracting information, manually entering figures, updating formulas, validating balances, and trying to ensure everything tied together correctly.

Then the report would be reviewed and distributed. Month after month.

If a metric changed, leadership requested a new analysis; if a calculation needed adjustment, the process began again.

Most financial institutions have some version of this workflow. It may involve a different employee or a different report, but the challenges are remarkably similar:

• Data comes from multiple sources.

• Manual processes consume valuable time.

• Verification is limited.

• Errors can be difficult to identify.

• Forecasting is often disconnected from reporting.

• Strategic analysis takes a back seat to data preparation.

Alleviating these pain points doesn’t mean you must create a better spreadsheet. It just means you have an opportunity to create a better process before your data ever hits the spreadsheet.

Centralized Financial Data Creates a More Trusted Foundation

Imagine a different approach.

Instead of collecting information from multiple systems and manually assembling reports, you load month-end data into a centralized analytical platform.

Before any report is generated, the data is validated, scrubbed, reconciled, and prepared for analysis.

You can identify missing records, inconsistencies, balancing issues, unexpected variances, and warning conditions immediately, and information can be reconciled back to the general ledger – creating a trusted foundation before reporting ever begins.

As the old saying goes: garbage in, garbage out.

A sophisticated Excel workbook built on inaccurate, incomplete, or unverified data will still produce questionable results. But when data has been validated, reconciled, modeled, and prepared before it reaches Excel, decision- makers can focus on interpreting the information rather than questioning its accuracy.

Financial institutions spend significant time analyzing results, preparing for examinations, supporting audits, and making strategic decisions. Confidence in the underlying data is critical. The stronger the foundation, the more confidence decision-makers can place in the information they use.

But validation is only part of the story.

Validated Data Turns Financial Reporting Into Strategic Insight

Once the data has been loaded and validated, it becomes much more than a collection of balances.

Forecasting calculations can be applied. Cash flows can be projected. Deposit behaviors can be modeled. Investment and borrowing assumptions can be incorporated. Budget scenarios can be developed. Historical performance can be analyzed alongside future projections.

Instead of simply reporting what happened, you gain the ability to evaluate what could happen next.

This is where the Jack Henry^® Financial Performance Suite (FPS) creates value.

The platform transforms raw financial data into a trusted analytical environment where reporting, forecasting, profitability, budgeting, and strategic planning can all work from the same foundation. Only then does Excel enter the picture.

Rather than becoming the place where data is gathered, validated, manipulated, and maintained, Excel becomes the place where information is consumed, analyzed, and presented in:

• Board packages and executive dashboards

• Branch performance reports and profitability scorecards

• Budget workbooks

Users can continue working in the environment they know best while leveraging data that has already been validated, reconciled, modeled, and prepared.

Spend Less Time Preparing Data and More Time Analyzing It

Consider that same customer service representative from earlier.

With FPS, instead of spending days gathering data from multiple systems and manually updating spreadsheets, the CSR initiates the monthly data process within FPS and the platform performs the heavy lifting:

• Loads data

• Validates balances

• Identifies exceptions

• Performs calculations

• Updates forecasts

• Prepares reporting data

Rather than collecting information, the employee can now spend time understanding it.

That’s a significant shift. The employee’s role evolves from data collector to information analyst. And the benefits extend well beyond executive reporting.

Finance teams can evaluate multiple budget scenarios. Branch managers can monitor performance trends and improve decision-making with daily financial reporting. Credit analysts can review portfolio results. Investment officers can assess earnings sensitivity and balance-sheet positioning. Executive teams can compare strategic alternatives and understand future outcomes.

Every department works from the same trusted source of information. Excel still plays an important role, but it’s now supported by a process designed for financial analysis rather than data assembly.

The result isn’t simply faster reporting. It’s a fundamental shift in how time is spent.

• Less time is spent gathering data, validating spreadsheets, reconciling formulas, and searching for errors.

• More time is spent analyzing performance, understanding trends, and evaluating opportunities.

Ultimately, you’ll spend more time making informed decisions. And perhaps that’s the greatest benefit of all.

Make Excel More Valuable With a Stronger Data Foundation

You don’t need to abandon Excel. After all, people are comfortable with it, experienced with it, and rely on it every day. But what you do need is a stronger process behind it.

When trusted financial data, validation, forecasting, profitability analysis, budgeting, and strategic planning come together in a centralized platform, Excel becomes even more valuable because the information flowing into it can be trusted.

In the end, it isn’t the spreadsheet that matters – it’s the confidence, control, and insight created by the process behind it.

Learn more about how Financial Performance Suite can help you transform your financial management process.