5 Reasons FP&A Teams Are Choosing Excel Alternatives for Close and Consolidation

Excel still powers many close and consolidation processes. If you’re using it today, you’re not alone.

As your business grows, what once felt manageable starts to feel heavier. More entities. More currencies. More reporting requirements. More pressure to deliver answers faster.

Spreadsheets were never designed to run enterprise consolidation. You feel that gap every time the close begins.

That’s why more FP&A teams are turning to modern financial performance management platforms like Planful to bring structure, speed, and confidence to close and consolidation.

Here are five reasons teams like yours are making the move.

During close, speed determines relevance. The faster you close, the faster you can guide decisions.

When you rely on spreadsheets, your team spends time reconciling versions, validating formulas, and confirming which file is correct. Every manual update increases risk. One overwritten formula or outdated tab can ripple through your entire consolidation.

If your close feels like a race every month, the issue isn’t effort. Its structure.

With Planful, you centralize your data and automate consolidation workflows. Intercompany eliminations, currency translation, and reporting logic run inside a controlled system. You reduce manual handoffs and shorten review cycles because everyone works from the same source of truth.

Planful’s 2025 Global Finance Survey found that 68% of finance teams still rely on manual processes during close. If that sounds familiar, you already know how much time you could reclaim.

As your organization expands, you’re managing more moving parts than ever:

• New entities.
• Acquisitions.
• Reorganizations.
• Multiple ERPs.
• Different account structures.

In Excel, that complexity turns into sprawling workbooks full of links, custom logic, and hidden dependencies. Your consolidation process starts to depend on institutional knowledge from the few people who understand how everything works.

Mi Hub, an international supplier of corporate clothing and uniforms, experienced this firsthand.

Each subsidiary used a different ERP, and they all captured data in different formats and with different account structures. Everything had to be manually reconstructed in Excel.

“I was doing that in a massive Excel spreadsheet. It was all customized, and only I knew how it worked. I was the single point of failure,” explained Mark Hobbs, Director of FP&A.

When your consolidation depends on institutional knowledge instead of system logic, you carry operational risk every month.

Planful eliminates that dependency. You standardize data across entities, automate eliminations, and manage currency translation within a governed environment. Ownership becomes clear. Processes become repeatable. You protect continuity even when roles change.

Excel delivers snapshots. Planful delivers live answers.

You’re expected to answer questions immediately. Leadership doesn’t want static reports. They want context and explanation.

In Excel, insight lives in files. Variances have to be manually identified. Reports reflect a moment in time rather than what’s happening now.

Planful embeds automation and AI directly into your workflows. Variances surface automatically. Anomalies are flagged as they occur. Explanations tie back to underlying transactions. You see what changed, why it changed, and where to focus.

Because intelligence lives inside your close process, you don’t need to export files or run side analyses. You move from validation to explanation to action in one continuous workflow.

You gain:

• Faster access to explainable insights
• Secure, finance-specific AI grounded in your data model
• Confidence in outputs you can clearly articulate to leadership
• Insight becomes part of how you close, not an extra step afterward.

Learn more: Your Essential AI Explainability Checklist

Consolidation is where your numbers face scrutiny. Intercompany eliminations need documentation. Currency translation must follow a consistent methodology. Every adjustment and reclass requires traceability and ownership.

You’re producing financial statements that leadership, auditors, and regulators rely on. Your process needs to be controlled, repeatable, and defensible.

Planful builds that structure directly into your consolidation workflow. Intercompany eliminations follow defined system logic. Currency translation runs on consistent rules across entities. Every adjustment is logged automatically with ownership and history. Approval workflows are structured and enforceable, so governance lives inside the process.

When someone asks how a number was derived, you drill down and show the record.

You close with full auditability and the confidence to stand behind every number.

Explore an interactive demo: ESG Performance and Initiatives Management

Choosing an alternative to Excel makes everything easier because purpose-built financial performance management (FPM) tools, like Planful, are designed specifically for these workflows. They provide:

• A centralized source of truth
• Automated consolidations and eliminations
• Clear ownership, visibility, and auditability
• Real-time reporting and analysis
• Better collaboration across teams

Instead of managing spreadsheets, you get to manage the close with fewer surprises and far less stress.

Alltech, a global leader in animal nutrition, was consolidating more than 100 legal entities across regions using spreadsheets. The process was manual, time-consuming, and increasingly difficult to manage at scale.

After implementing Planful, Alltech centralized financial data across entities. Intercompany eliminations became structured and repeatable. Adjustments were visible and traceable. Close cycles became more predictable.

Most importantly, the finance team shifted its focus. Instead of reconciling files, they explained results and supported strategic decisions. Best of all, Alltech now saves eight days per month on each close cycle.

Alltech’s experience highlights what’s possible when consolidation is supported by structure, rather than workarounds.

• Excel slows close and consolidation by introducing manual work, version risk, and delays as complexity grows.
• Embedded automation and intelligence outperform bolt-on AI because insights are generated directly within close workflows.
• Purpose-built Excel alternatives improve close and consolidation processes by adding structure, governance, and scalability.

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Close and consolidation doesn’t have to feel this stressful.

Explore an interactive demo of Planful’s close and consolidation capabilities.

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Why are finance teams moving away from Excel for close and consolidation?

Finance teams are moving away from Excel due to difficulties with version control, manual processes, and scaling as consolidation complexity increases. As businesses grow, spreadsheets introduce risk and slow down close cycles. Many teams turn to Excel alternatives to gain structure, automation, and confidence in their financial results.

What should FP&A leaders look for in Excel alternatives for financial consolidation?

FP&A leaders should look for Excel alternatives that provide centralized data, automated consolidations, audit trails, and real-time reporting. The best tools embed artificial intelligence directly into close workflows instead of relying on manual analysis after the fact. This ensures insights are timely, explainable, and actionable.

How does Planful approach close and consolidation differently from spreadsheets?

Planful believes that close and consolidation should be a controlled, repeatable discipline rather than a fragile spreadsheet process. Instead of relying on manual workarounds, Planful supports embedded automation, scalable consolidation, and explainable AI designed specifically for Finance. This allows teams to move faster while maintaining trust in the numbers.