Many large corporations throughout the United States have more consistent funding and cashflow than small businesses and nonprofits, but while they may be more steady, having a strong budget is still of the utmost importance. Large companies must make sure they have capital to pay the bills and keep the lights on, while also having enough to invest in new products and services to help them improve their bottom line. One of the most popular tools large corporations use for budgeting is Microsoft Excel, which allows users to create a customized solution to manage their finances.

Although Excel provides a number of budget-building tools and benefits, it's not without its limitations. In many cases, the spreadsheet software is a great supplementary budgeting tool, but does not serve as the all-encompassing business projection option like many businesses may think.

Pros

Large corporations need to have solutions for financial forecasting that allow them to plan their finances for months in advance. Excel's budgeting tool includes a regression analysis solution that allows users to forecast sales for a particular product for the upcoming year. By examining the figures for sales in recent months, big businesses can use the trends function to get an idea of what to expect in terms of sales for the next 12 months. Having an idea of potential sales can help large corporations manage other aspects of their budgets.

Sales forecasting is one of the most useful tools when using budgeting software, but automating Excel-based budgeting may be just as important. With Spreadsheet Analyst Budgeting, Excel helps organizations by using a data warehouse to hold budget structure and data. Business can easily use the tool to keep their spreadsheets intact and adjust them as necessary.

 

Cons

Many users have found that Excel struggles when there is a vast amount of data that needs to be integrated quickly for deployments. Excel models have been known to lose integrity and break, and thus has been categorized as an unreliable tool for completing statistical calculations. Although these breakdowns may be infrequent, if they occur and are not immediately spotted, they may put a major wrench in a large company's budgeting plan. Large businesses simply can't depend on solely on a budgeting tool that has the potential to lose its integrity.

Best of both worlds?

Because of these potential issues Excel can cause with budgeting, large corporations should look to other solutions such as dedicated budgeting software. Solutions that can integrate with Excel can give large businesses the ability to import up to five years of past data in order to have a more full-fledged idea of future forecasts. Budgeting software can also be used in the cloud, giving users access to their budgets from anywhere.

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