Here’s the hypothesis:
Excel survives because it’s the fastest place to prove a number under pressure.
When the CEO wants an answer in 10 minutes, or the board asks “walk me through it,” finance teams reach for the tool that shows every assumption in plain sight.
Now let’s work through what the reporting and data actually say.
The evidence: Excel loyalty is widespread and measurable
A Datarails survey of 212 finance professionals in the US and UK found:
82% reported a high or moderate emotional attachment to Excel.
45% said they “love” it, and 43% described a “love-hate” relationship.
More than half said they’d decline a job where they couldn’t use Excel.
89% said at least half their finance processes run through Excel.
99% said they spend at least three hours a day in it, and younger staff reported heavier usage.
84% of CFOs agreed Excel will be equally or more important over the next 10 years.
It’s a workflow reality, it’s not just a niche preference..
What’s driving the grip Excel has on finance
Trust and transparency under deadlines
CFO Brew quoted a firm founder who pointed to trust: Excel makes it easy to “pull apart” numbers, gut-check assumptions, and validate quickly when deadlines are tight.
A lot of finance tools show results. Excel shows the wiring. That distinction matters when you’re defending a number to leadership, auditors, or a lender.
Universality across companies and systems
Excel remains the shared language across departments because every system exports data, and the exported file is often a spreadsheet. That “everyone can open it” effect keeps it embedded in workflows and handoffs.
“App fatigue” and training cost
The article quotes a finance creator explaining that Excel feels like “old faithful,” largely because it’s customizable and most people already know it, so teams avoid adding yet another tool to learn.
AI’s real impact: speed, not replacement
AI can help with summarizing, explaining, generating formulas, and speeding up analysis, but the spreadsheet often remains the place where assumptions get set, scenarios get tested, and outputs get reconciled. Microsoft has also been positioning Copilot features directly inside Excel, which supports the idea that the spreadsheet is becoming the home for AI-assisted work rather than a victim of it.
The risk side: Excel dependence carries governance debt
Once spreadsheets become core infrastructure, mistakes stop being “oops” and start becoming operational risk
Public examples keep surfacing:
England’s COVID reporting issue involved an Excel limitation that contributed to delayed case reporting.
The Reinhart/Rogoff controversy included an Excel error that affected widely cited economic conclusions.
Analyses of the JPMorgan “London Whale” episode highlighted reliance on manual spreadsheet processes and errors in risk work.
Separate reporting has also highlighted how widespread spreadsheet errors can be, and why spreadsheet governance has become its own niche.
This helps explain a quieter trend: firms buying tools and processes that wrap controls around spreadsheets (audit trails, version control, approvals, access management) because the spreadsheet is used like a system even when it’s managed like a file.
One important context note about the survey itself
Datarails is an FP&A platform company, and the survey supports a worldview where Excel remains central to finance workflows.
That doesn’t automatically invalidate the results, but it’s relevant when interpreting how the story is framed and what conclusions are emphasized.
Where this is heading over the next few years
A realistic direction, based on how vendors and workflows are evolving:
Excel stays the interface layer for modeling, what-ifs, reconciliations, and last-mile reporting.
Controls around spreadsheets increase because leaders are less willing to accept “critical process in an uncontrolled file.”
AI gets embedded into the spreadsheet workflow (formula help, anomaly detection, narrative explanations), with Excel remaining the canvas.
Question for CFOs (in the comments)
In your org, what would be harder to replace: Excel the tool, or Excel as the trust mechanism?
And if you had to pick one change to make tomorrow: would you invest first in better spreadsheet governance (controls, ownership, audit trails), or in reducing spreadsheet dependency by moving workflows into systems?