Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs

Re:Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs by dkersten on Thursday November 23, 2017 @06:27AM (#15764386)

> Validation: I'm confident that I can catch duplicated rows and mistyped amounts because Excel formulas verify that the sum of all transactions for each account equals the account balance, and that transfers between accounts add up to $0. Do I need anything more?

I'm sure that the people who made these billion dollar mistakes were pretty confident too... https://www.cio.com/article/2438188/enterprise-software/eigh...

"The error occurred when the accountant omitted the minus sign on a net capital loss of $1.3 billion" (Fidelity)

"There were honest mistakes made in a spreadsheet used in the implementation of a new accounting standard." (Fannie Mae, $1.36 billion loss)

There's a bunch of lower (million dollar) losses listed in the linked page too.

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Re:Stop Using Excel, Finance Chiefs Tell Staffs by allenz on Thursday November 23, 2017 @07:14AM (#15764526)

I don't doubt that people have made mistakes involving spreadsheets. But these mistakes are not unique to spreadsheets. Switching to an enterprise system doesn't magically prevent data entry problems.[1] Similarly, you're as likely to implement an accounting function incorrectly in Excel as in SQL or Java.

I think that you need to show that Excel requires more data entry, or riskier data entry, or that Excel can't catch as many errors, etc. For now I'm not convinced.

[1] https://www.accountingweb.com/aa/auditing/human-errors-the-t...

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