I Crowdsourced the Challenges FP&A Teams Are Having with Excel—Here’s What I Found

As VP of Marketing for Centage, I’m always hunting for the real story behind the numbers—especially for mid-market FP&A teams like yours. You’re the ones keeping growing companies on track, often with nothing but grit, caffeine, and… Excel. But is that trusty spreadsheet still serving you—or silently sabotaging you?

To find out, I turned to the crowd. I scoured Twitter (I can’t call it X) posts from finance pros in 2025, tapped into web chatter, and pieced together what’s really going on. Spoiler: FP&A teams are fed up, and “spreadsheet hell” isn’t just a catchy phrase—it’s their daily grind. Here’s what I found—and why it’s time to rethink your toolkit.

1. Errors Are Everywhere (and They’re Costly)

The crowd doesn’t mince words: Excel errors are a nightmare. One finance pro on Twitter vented, “A single spreadsheet mistake can cost millions.” Sound dramatic? It’s not. Studies peg 88% of spreadsheets with errors—some small, some catastrophic. Think JPMorgan’s $6 billion “London Whale” flop from a copy-paste gone wrong. 

In 2025, with more data pouring in from ERPs and CRMs, mid-market teams told me they’re fat-fingering decimals, breaking formulas, and praying nothing blows up mid-budget review. The stakes? Wasted hours—or worse, a forecast so off it tanks your next quarter.

2. Manual Work Is Draining the Life Out of FP&A

If you’re manually pulling data into Excel from ten different sources, you’re not alone. Twiter is buzzing with gripes about “manual data entry” and “chasing ghost errors” across endless tabs. One user quipped, “FP&A is still filled with gridlines,” spotlighting how mid-market teams—too big for Excel, too small for enterprise suites—lean on spreadsheets way past their breaking point. 

Version control? A mess. “Forecast_v7_final_reallyfinal.xlsx” rings a bell, right? The crowd agrees: this isn’t planning—it’s data janitor work.

3. Slow Reporting Kills Agility

In a year of economic curveballs—think high interest rates and global uncertainty—FP&A teams need speed. Excel delivers the opposite. Finance folks on Twitter flagged “slow reporting” as a top frustration: consolidating department inputs or debugging a crashed model takes days, not hours. By the time you’ve got answers, the numbers are stale. 

Mid-market companies scaling fast can’t afford that lag—not when leadership’s asking, “What’s our cash flow look like next month?” and you’re still untangling VLOOKUPs.

4. Burnout Is Real—and Excel’s the Culprit

Here’s the gut punch: FP&A teams are exhausted. One Twitter user nailed it: “FP&A stands for ‘Fix Problems Alone.’” Sound familiar? You’re understaffed, overworked, and stuck wrestling spreadsheets instead of strategizing. 

The crowd told me burnout’s spiking—hours lost to manual fixes leave no room for the big-picture analysis your company hired you for. Excel’s not just a tool; it’s a ball and chain.

The Breaking Point—and the Way Out

The Twitter chatter crystallized something I’ve suspected: mid-market FP&A teams hit a wall with Excel. You’re outgrowing it—too much data, too many risks—but enterprise tools like Anaplan feel out of reach. That’s the gap Centage fills. I heard it loud and clear: you need software that kills spreadsheet hell without breaking the bank.

Centage does just that. It swaps manual entry for real-time data pulls, banishes version chaos with a single source of truth, and cuts reporting time from days to minutes. Errors? Slashed. Burnout? Eased. It’s built for mid-market teams like yours—agile enough to scale, simple enough to adopt fast.

Escape Spreadsheet Hell

The crowd’s spoken: Excel’s holding FP&A back in 2025. If you’re nodding along, stuck in gridlines while your company outgrows them, let’s talk. See how Centage turns spreadsheet hell into FP&A heaven. Because you deserve a tool that works as hard as you do.

About the Author:

Andrew Fear is the VP of Marketing at Centage, where he leads the charge in bringing modern FP&A solutions to finance teams looking to move beyond spreadsheets. With a passion for storytelling, demand generation, and data-driven strategy, Andrew is focused on helping finance leaders make smarter, faster decisions with intuitive budgeting and forecasting tools.