From spreadsheet reporting to a finance cockpit: making the switch

26 July 2026 · 9 min read · Manfred Schönberger

In almost every SME I get to know, monthly reporting hangs on one spreadsheet and one person. Both work reliably for years – until the company grows. This article describes what the switch to an automated finance cockpit actually depends on, which metrics belong in it, and in what order to proceed.

Where spreadsheet reporting breaks down

Excel is an excellent tool, and the switch rarely begins with a shortcoming of the software. It begins with the growth of the company using it.

Jens Horstmann, board member at TREVISTO AG, describes the progression in the announcement accompanying his podcast:

"Controlling dashboards and complex metric calculations in Microsoft Excel are easy to build. It is quick and simple. Yet over time the manual effort rises and the number of errors grows. Results are often no longer traceable, and maintenance depends on the employee who originally built the spreadsheet." Jens Horstmann, TREVISTO AG, video description of 25 December 2022, translated from the German

These four symptoms appear in that order and reinforce one another. Rising effort creates time pressure, time pressure creates errors, errors create traceability problems, and because only one person understands the construction, review does not happen. In mandates I therefore ask for two numbers first: how many working days does your monthly close take, and how many people could produce it?

What belongs in a finance cockpit

A finance cockpit brings the metrics that matter for steering into one place, refreshes itself from the source systems and is accessible from any device. Selection is what counts. A cockpit with sixty metrics becomes an archive in which nobody spots a variance any more.

The fourth row matters most and is missing most often. A cockpit showing only actuals informs. Only the comparison against an expectation prompts action.

The switch in four phases

Horstmann walks through a practical example of moving from Excel to Power BI in a second contribution. The approach I use in mandates runs in four phases, typically over eight to twelve weeks to the first cockpit in production.

1. Take stock. Which reports exist, who actually uses them, where does each figure come from? A third of the reports regularly falls away at this step because nobody reads them any more.
2. Define the metrics. One formula, one source and one accountable person per metric, in writing. This is the least popular step and the one that decides the outcome.
3. Build the data connection and the model. Automated extracts from ERP, payroll and bank; a data model that calculates each metric once.
4. Publish the cockpit and hand it over. Access rights, refresh cadence, ownership. Then supported use across two or three closes.

The transition runs in parallel. The spreadsheet reports continue until the cockpit delivers identical figures across two consecutive closes. That duplication costs effort and prevents the loss of confidence that endangers every switch.

The three most common mistakes

• Rebuilding the old reports. A spreadsheet report has grown around the limits of Excel over years. Rebuilding it one to one carries the constraints across and leaves the benefit on the table.
• Too much at once. Connecting every area simultaneously produces an initiative that has delivered nothing after a year. One area that runs beats five that are half finished.
• Skipping the definitions. Without binding metric definitions the new tool produces the same contradictory figures as before. Management then debates data quality instead of the business.

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