gfolds

Apart from the generic question of the pros and cons of using Excel as a data store and how you solve issues around access control, concurrent access, backups, etc., financial databases have some additional requirements to be properly auditable. For example, one of the biggest differences is that the data should be immutable with only additions allowed. E.g. if you made an error and need to correct it (say you sent the wrong amount of money to someone or simply just had a bug), you should keep the record of the erroneous transaction and reverse it or book an adjustment.

You can try to institute the same controls over Excel, either directly in code or just implicitly in terms of how it's used, but they tend to break down pretty quickly with scale.

True but there is a threshold. If the problem is small enough, you can't beat an Excel spreadsheet's flexibility and low startup cost.

Having worked with a number of finance teams, the biggest problem is not when Excel is used as an analytics tool but as a financial database. Excel as a source of truth for financial data is truly terrifying. Even financial audits are still often handled with custom data pulls exchanged over Excel spreadsheets.

Shameless plug: that's why we ended up developing one of those SaaS tools (http://modfin.io). It lets finance teams map their source data to a proper, easily auditable accounting ledger so that they don't need to do their "magic" in Excel.