Showing posts with label excel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label excel. Show all posts

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Keeping your accounts in a Spreadsheet: 5 reasons why it's a bad idea

Spreadsheets are very powerful tools. They were the main reason the PC revolution got started in the first place. While most people have forgotten Visicalc or Lotus 123, their successor Excel -- or even Google Docs --  is now so powerful that some businesses run their entire operations on spreadsheets.

But is it wise to do keep your books on a spreadsheet? I would argue that it's not and for the following reasons:

1. Getting the right functionality is hard

Out of the box, a spreadsheet will not provide the functionality you need to keep track of revenue, expenses, VAT, bank accounts etc... It can be done but it does require some work. You can find ready-made spreadsheets that will provide some of that functionality (and as a matter of fact we do provide such a template to our clients) but the functionality will never be as good as what a dedicated bookkeeping package can offer.