Finance teams have spent years searching for better ways to streamline reporting, reduce manual effort, and improve access to timely information. Yet despite advances in ERP systems and reporting tools, spreadsheets remain firmly embedded in the finance function.
That reality served as the foundation for a recent Controllers Council and CloudExtend webinar, From Backlog to Boardroom-Ready: Best Practices for NetSuite Financial Reporting, featuring Brandt Kucharski, Chief Accounting Officer at Ethos Life, along with Chris Corcoran, General Manager of CloudExtend, and Justine Burdo, Head of Sales and Customer Success at CloudExtend.
The discussion examined why Excel continues to play a central role in finance, where manual reporting processes still create unnecessary work, and how finance teams can connect NetSuite data directly to Excel to improve reporting accuracy and efficiency.
Excel Remains the Language of Finance
While many organizations have invested heavily in ERP platforms, finance professionals continue to rely on Excel for analysis, collaboration, and decision-making.
Kucharski challenged the notion that spreadsheets should be eliminated from the finance process. “I am not a subscriber to the idea that Excel is bad. I think it’s critical.”
He explained that finance teams are rarely working in isolation. Reports, forecasts, and analyses often need to be shared across departments, making Excel a common language throughout the organization. “The majority of the company works in Excel.”
He also noted that efforts to replace Excel entirely often create friction rather than efficiency. “You need to be able to share information amongst marketing, IT, get data, move fast and Excel is where it’s all at.”
Rather than focusing on removing spreadsheets, the panel encouraged organizations to improve the way data flows into them.
The Real Issue Is Manual Reporting
According to Burdo, the challenge is not Excel itself. The challenge is the repetitive work surrounding it.
Finance teams frequently spend hours exporting data, rebuilding reports, reconciling versions, and validating numbers before meaningful analysis can begin.
As Burdo explained: “The conversation really isn’t about getting finance teams completely off Excel. It should really be about fixing the painful parts of how they use it every day.”
Many organizations continue to manage substantial portions of their reporting process manually. The result is a reporting cycle that consumes valuable time while increasing the possibility of inconsistencies.
“What they’re trying to eliminate are those manual exports, the disconnected data, the repetitive rebuilding of the same reports month after month.”
The panel argued that the objective should be to eliminate unnecessary manual steps while preserving the flexibility finance professionals depend on.
NetSuite Provides the Data. Excel Provides the Context.
One of the most memorable observations from the discussion focused on the distinct roles played by NetSuite and Excel.
Burdo described NetSuite as the system that captures financial activity, while Excel remains the place where finance teams interpret and communicate results. “Your ERP, which is NetSuite in this case, is the system of record.”
At the same time: “Excel is the system of interpretation.” Finance teams use spreadsheets to perform trend analysis, compare periods, evaluate performance, test assumptions, and prepare executive-level reporting.
Drawing on his experience at both Grubhub and Ethos Life, Kucharski described how operational and financial data is continually brought into Excel for deeper examination.”A lot of data flows into Excel to really feed decisions in the business.”
That process remains essential because leadership teams require more than raw transactional information. They need context, analysis, and recommendations.
Automation Creates More Time for Analysis
Throughout the webinar, the speakers returned to a common theme: automation should free finance professionals to spend more time evaluating information and less time preparing it.
Kucharski shared examples from earlier stages of his career when large reconciliation processes required significant manual effort. “Anytime you can automate a process like that, it’s huge.”
He also described how Ethos Life moved key accounting processes from spreadsheets into NetSuite to reduce risk and improve consistency.
The broader opportunity, however, extends beyond automation itself. “The accountant job is to take manual processes and automate them as much as you can.”
As finance organizations reduce administrative work, they gain more capacity for review, investigation, and strategic support.
Why Real-Time Reporting Matters
A major focus of the webinar was the ability to connect NetSuite and Excel through live data connections.
Instead of exporting CSV files and rebuilding reports each reporting cycle, finance teams can work with current information directly inside Excel.
Kucharski highlighted the practical benefits of this approach. “I’m a big fan of live updates in Excel.”
He described situations where accounting adjustments require teams to update reports repeatedly throughout the close process. With live connections, schedules can be refreshed immediately without recreating supporting workpapers. “If we make an adjustment, I can just go in that same schedule, hit an update button to verify the entry was posted.”
That capability can reduce rework while helping teams maintain alignment between supporting schedules and ERP records.
AI’s Role in Finance Is Still Emerging
The discussion also addressed the growing interest in artificial intelligence within finance and accounting.
While the panel acknowledged that AI is already proving useful for research, reporting assistance, and presentation development, Kucharski cautioned against expecting immediate replacement of core finance processes. “It’s very early with AI and what it can do right now.”
He pointed to practical use cases where AI can already contribute value, including accounting research and presentation preparation. “It’s very great for research and formatting emails and decks and stuff like that.”
At the same time, he believes Excel will remain central to finance operations for the foreseeable future. “Excel is still going to be where everything’s shared and analysis and balance sheet support.”
Rather than replacing finance professionals, AI may allow them to spend more time reviewing results and identifying insights.
As Kucharski noted: “The more you can automate and get more time to take a step back, the more you can review, the more you can look at data.”
Looking Ahead
The webinar underscored a reality familiar to many controllers and finance leaders. The future of reporting is not about abandoning Excel. It is about eliminating manual processes, improving access to current information, and allowing finance teams to devote more attention to analysis and decision support.
For organizations using NetSuite, connecting ERP data directly to Excel offers a practical path toward faster reporting cycles, greater confidence in financial information, and more time spent on work that influences business outcomes.
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