Practical Corporate Governance Tools in Financial Modelling

It is clear the abundant functionality of a spreadsheet delivers immense flexibility to a financial professional in many pursuits; strategic planning, investor pitchbook presentations, project or investment finance and financial reporting. These various disciplines of financial modelling can leverage the following techniques, which can greatly improve the corporate governance credentials of a best practice financial model.

“Drop in the ocean” financial modelling value

A simple drop-down list restricts the use of inputs to a specific data array, and more importantly in best practice financial modelling it is an effective approach to increasing spreadsheet controls around data inputs. Additionally, the dependent drop-down list takes this one step further; it’s array of data is determined by the value selected from a precendent drop-down list, which provides a further layer added value to a best practice financial model.

The Good, the bad, and the ugly of spreadsheet use

The ubiquitous and user-friendly nature of spreadsheets has resulted in a heavily reliance by business. However, as a financial modelling professional, I am acutely aware its use and application can be good, bad or even downright ugly at times. There are certain areas of financial, business or management informational analysis, which are best served or kept in the sphere of accounting systems or databases.

Executive, Financial Dashboards 101

The humble financial dashboard represents a bite-size output to summarise the company’s financial performance, key drivers and deliver a high-level graphical or pictorial summary of a company. The very essence of a dashboard is to deliver a high-level snapshot of a company’s financial performance and position. The dashboard must be cosmetically uniform in font, colours and form. Whilst the dashboards must be short, sharp, concise and relevant, in what they are presenting to the time-consuming corporate executive or stakeholder.