Finance & Accounting Modelling Assessment Tool


The assessment covers 5 main areas namely:

1. Modelling for Critical Decision Making & Value Add

2. Structure, format and stakeholder presentation

3. Governance and control

4. Automation and efficiency

5. Adoption of best practice

What to do?
Simply work through each question and rate your function to receive an overall diagnosis score.

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Name *
Assessment score (max 200)
The assessment score is out of 200 and it will give you a self-audit on where you need to invest more resources, time, tools or development to realise the benefits in decision support, advisory or partnership capabilities.

If you or your team/function score is 100 or below, you are lagging in the area of financial modelling and will need to explore adopting these skills to improvement business partnership or advisory capabilities.

If you or your team/function score is above 100 but below 150 then are you have already developed some level of modelling capability and its a great starting point for you to develop further in providing valued decision making support and valuable insights.

If you or your team/function score is 150 or above then you have a solid foundation to further develop this capability ahead of others in the finance and accounting sector. Keep up the great work!  

This indicates that you are in the top tier of finance functions leveraging financial modelling effectively for decision support and partnership.
1.1 Modelling for Critical Decision Making & Value Add

Are the spreadsheet models produced by your team dynamic? Are you able to easily run sensitivities,  scenarios or simulations on key drivers or assumptions within them? 
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10 points
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1.2 Modelling for Critical Decision Making & Value Add

Does your team use any of the more advanced functions within Excel like Power Query, Power Pivot, Goal Seek, Monte Carlo Simulation or Multi Dimensional Scenario management and data tables.
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10 points
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2.1 Structure, format and stakeholder presentation

Are your spreadsheet models easy to navigate with a transparent and well structured format and layout containing easy to follow assumptions, formulas/logic and outputs?

Examples of this may include navigation structured either through sheet colours, hyperlinked table of contents or hamburger menu drop down.

If your model contains hidden or deep hidden sheets or logic embedded in VBA code or very deep nested if statements its not transparent.
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10 points
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2.2 Structure, format and stakeholder presentation

Does your team produce rolling (updating with actuals) 3-way models which include an Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement, so that they can leverage from the holistic financial performance and position of the business or is this an independent and disconnected analysis. 

In other words does your team have to separately update the Income Statement and Balance Sheet items in different spreadsheets?
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10 points
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2.3 Structure, format and stakeholder presentation

Do your team's workbooks and models crash regularly possibly as a result of excessive size or for no other apparent reason eg corrupted work books and sometimes require a complete rebuild? 

Is there a lot of wasted real estate inside workbooks ie large ranges of complete blank cells with calculation at the bottom of this space?
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10 points
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3.1 Governance and control

Do you know if your spreadsheet models contain errors or error reporting/ trapping?
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10 points
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3.2 Governance and control

Are your spreadsheet models reviewed regularly or even on an adhoc basis independently between team members or by using model audit technology?
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10 points
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3.3 Governance and control

Are your spreadsheet processes documented and have good governance & change control, standardised best practice approaches, error prevention and other similar control policies and procedures?

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10 points
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4.1 Automation and efficiency

Is your team's month, quarter or year end spreadsheet based process highly automated (APIs and automation Excel-Addins) and doesn't require manual updating ie copy and pasting of the source data from large systems?
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10 points
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4.2 Automation and efficiency

Does your team know how to automate copy and pasting processes with the use of basic macro recording and editing or perhaps even Power Query or other automation tools?
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10 points
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5. Best Practice Adoption

This is a series of very specific questions relating to the contents and structure of the models.

You can either select a current model or think generally about your spreadsheets and models in the team.

5.1 Best Practice Adoption

Do you have separate assumptions, logic and output closely visible with colors and location transparently shown?

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10 points

5.2 Best Practice Adoption

Do you have hardcoding in formulas other than binary ie 1 or 0 ?

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10 points

5.3 Best Practice Adoption

Do you have consistent formula logic, ideally in blocks, which implies no changes to any formulas midway across any rows?

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10 points

5.4 Best Practice Adoption

Do you have consistent and unique timeseries structures at the top of every relevant sheet that has a timeseries?

In other words you never mix time series across the same sheet ie monthly with quarterly and annual together in the same rows?

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10 points

5.5 Best Practice Adoption

Do you break out logic with flags and counters where required and limit the size of fomulas?  

In other words, do your formulas run along  multiple rows in the formula bar and cannot fit easily without expanding the formula bar to see it all.

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10 points

5.6 Best Practice Adoption

Do you keep inter-sheet formula links to a minimum and link across only once to source and refer within the sheet to the master not multiple servant references (daisy chaining)?

Here is reference to daisy chaining in an earlier article for reference.

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10 points

5.7 Best Practice Adoption

Do you include error and data validation checks into your models with summarised and easily aggregation of checks that are easily identified and thereby preventing and highlighting errors as they occur?

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10 points

5.8 Best Practice Adoption

Do you include a cover sheet and clearly explain the purpose of the model?

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10 points

5.9 Best Practice Adoption

Do your models contain a scenario manager, or it’s not a model by definition!

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10 points

5.10 Best Practice Adoption

Does your model contain dashboards and other visual outputs that are essential to help users gain an understanding at a high level of both the assumptions and outcomes visually and to help spot and check for any errors or anomalies?

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10 points
Want a more detailed independent assessment?

Would you like an independent assessment done on your team across the above and on more detailed aspects of best practice planning, forecasting, budgeting and modelling capabilities?

This includes actually reviewing some of their current models and providing a detailed report on findings and recommendations for improvement.

We also include one free follow up re-assessment 12 months post the initial assessment to investigate whether the recommendations were implemented.

Before you invest in your next planning tool, perhaps explore this assessment to better understand how you might short circuit some of your current challenges.

If so, simply confirm below and we will reach out via email to lock in a time to discuss.

If not (no worries), enjoy the findings of this assessment.
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A copy of your responses will be emailed to the address you provided.
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