Common spreadsheet problems; “Worst Practice”

I read an interesting article on CFO.com about the usual mistakes made when building financial models. They suggest the following: 1) Poor Segregation of Data 2) Poor Documentation of Assumptions 3) Poor Documentation of Constraints 4) Difficulties in Making Changes 5) “Now It’s Here; Now It’s Not” 6) The Presentation Readiness Problem They then suggest [...]

Free workshop for mid size businesses

We are co-hosting a workshop in the middle of an event being run by the M-Institute on the 17th June in London. Places are free so please contact cat.corcoran@ruggedlogic.com or call her on 0151 702 8330 to book your place. Its free!! The focus of our workshop at 9:30 will be: Forecasting and the management of costs [...]

Modelling errors and an organisation that is trying to stamp them out

EuSpRIG is the world’s only independent web based source of information describing the current state of the art in Spreadsheet Risk Management.  Their site makes an interesting read, but beware if you are a fainthearted FD! As well as attempting to describe “best practice” for spreadsheet development they also list the publicly known errors caused [...]

Not a bad place to start…

Since this site is all about financial planning issues it would a good start to discuss the definition of a financial plan. Wikipedia gives its own view: In general usage, a financial plan can be a budget, a plan for spending and saving future income. This plan allocates future income to various types of expenses, [...]

Question: Have you been trained to build a financial model?

Forecasts get reviewed by management, boards, investors and potential investors. They drive the decisions that those parties take with regards the future direction of the company. Yet amazingly there is no industry standard for how to produce a cashflow forecast. I find this quite incredible. When you buy an Accounting System, the software is designed [...]