For decades, Microsoft Excel has enjoyed its long-standing position as the go-to data organization and reporting tool for the business community. 

However, while Excel is fairly standard throughout the professional landscape, many businesses outgrow Excel’s utility, yet they still wait too long before a switch to superior software is fully assessed. 

When companies begin to consider graduating from spreadsheets to an enterprise solution such as ERP software, their reasoning typically revolves around capability and efficiency. If your organization is starting to feel constrained from the limitations of manual spreadsheet accounting, you may consider making the switch, too.

Unwieldy Software = Wasted Money

This is as simple as it gets. Excel excels at performing basic tasks, but demands significant time and expertise to maintain files for quick access to data and reporting due to the amount of manual operation required. 

Every minute someone in your organization spends manually entering data or maintaining the cache of Excel files is a minute of wasted payroll, and those minutes turn into hours quickly. 

Read More: Is it time to move to a cloud-based financial system for your business?

User Error and Limited Integrations

One of the most common problems with Excel reporting is the frequency of user errors being reported. Excel has limited integrations which often require manual data entry workarounds, opening the door to more mistakes and data inaccuracies than necessary or acceptable. And speaking of errors…

Version Confusion Resulting from a Lack of Real-Time Updating

Updating an Excel document requires downloading, modifying, and saving the spreadsheet, then re-uploading it to your organization’s data hub. What happens if another colleague updates the Excel file with input at the same time? 

Suddenly you have redundant versions of the same data that are simultaneously both up-to-date and out-of-date. If this isn’t caught immediately, such a mistake can lead to costly consequences down the line. When updating Excel data isn’t occurring from a central location in real-time, you find yourself with an extremely antiquated business technology process. 

What About Audit Trails?

Excel falls short in maintaining audit trails, which are vital not only to ensure internal data integrity but can save your skin in the event of a compliance or IRS audit. Excel files are straightforward to modify but do a poor job of tracking which changes were made and by whom. 

A broken link in the audit trail compromises the entire chain, and the simple reality is that Excel’s version tracking and edit history maintenance is more broken links than sturdy ones. 

The Alternative

While the above is by no means an exhaustive exploration of the ways that Excel struggles in modern business, these problems are perhaps the most grave. However, where Excel wrestles (and often loses) with all of these problems and more, the right cloud-based ERP system tackles them quite handily. 

Real-Time Data Manipulation

Cloud-based ERP solutions maintain and modify all data from a central user hub in real-time, so there is no version confusion, and you never have to worry about working from outdated data. Such systems also maintain robust data trails so you can get back on track quickly if your data ever gets off course or in the event of a compliance audit. 

Integrations on Integrations

Cloud-based ERP systems also feature extensive integrations with many other software suites, which cuts down not only on costly manual entry time but significantly reduces the incidence of user error compromising the data. 

Whatever business software you use, there’s an ERP available designed for relevant integrations at the onset. As a result, your teams can spend valuable time less on data entry and more on mission-essential tasks that advance your business’s goals. 

Which cloud ERP accounting package do you need?

Voted #1 Accounting Software Product in Customer Satisfaction by G2 Crowd, Sage Intacct is built for finance professionals by finance experts. Through automation of your core financial processes with advanced functionality and accessibility in the cloud, you can get away from manual spreadsheet accounting to increase productivity, save time and reduce erroneous reporting so you can drive your business forward.

As a Sage Intacct Partner, e2b teknologies is a best-in-class provider to move your business to the cloud. Find out more about how e2b and Sage Intacct can transform your business.