Financial Model Audit: Parallel Build vs Cell by Cell
One of the key differences in approach adopted by the various financial model audit firms is whether they follow a parallel build or a cell by cell approach. If you are engaging an auditor to review your model, it is a question you should ask. Cell by Cell This approach is what the name implies. […]
Financial Model Audit: A Clean Audit Report
Having spent more of my career being audited, rather than being the auditor, I always had mixed feelings when I received a clean audit report where they hadn’t found any material issues. On the one hand, relief. The anticipation builds as you approach the bid, and the last thing you need is for the auditor […]
Model Audit 2.0 turns one this week. What have we learned?
Exactly one year ago Gridlines secured its first financial model audit mandate. As we now celebrate the one year anniversary of launching Model Audit 2.0, what have we achieved and what have we learned? Let’s start with the achievements: We have been appointed on over 20 audits with a transaction value in excess of 3Bn […]
What does the latest budget mean for UK Infrastructure?
Yesterday the UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak delivered his latest budget. In terms of measures relating to companies involved in infrastructure project finance there were a few key points that may be relevant for your business: Corporation Tax Rates The planned UK corporation tax rate rise to 25% in April 2023 will go ahead as previously […]
Openbox V1.0
The last year has been quite a journey for Openbox. The pace of change really picked up over the last couple of months as 500 beta users have tested Openbox and given us unbelievably valuable feedback. We are now nearly ready to take the big step to version 1.0. We’ll be releasing this in early […]
An Openbox Easter Egg Has Been Found
At the launch event for the Openbox public beta on Thursday, we mentioned the “Easter eggs” hidden in Openbox. The prize for the first to find each one is a free lifetime licence. Never underestimate a group of determined financial modellers… We thought it would be a few days before anything happened, but within hours, […]
Openbox Public Beta – Key updates and bug fixes since the private beta closed
The Openbox private beta closed late last year, and since then we’ve been concentrating on delivering the improvements that beta users asked for. We’re grateful to the dedicated users who have continued to send us additional suggestions, and we’ve been working to include those as well. So, as we launch the public beta, here is […]
How to avoid repeating history: 3 of the highest profile Excel errors of all time
Excel is a victim of its own success Excel is a tool widely used by analysts of all levels of experience. The combination of availability and flexibility, coupled with a widespread lack of training can mean Excel models are prone to errors. There are examples of Excel error contributing to losses in the Billions of […]
Is Excel the right tool for the job?
“if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. – Abraham Maslow Excel is great, but it is not the answer to every problem. Excel has its limitations and they should be considered before using it in a business-critical application. The decision to use Excel should be an active one, rather than […]
Are you relying on Excel based analysis to make business critical decisions?
In many businesses, Excel is used for critical reporting and decision making. As has been widely trailed, the flexibility and open structure of Excel models can leave them prone to error. When making decisions based upon an analysis of complex data it’s worth pausing for reflection before pushing the button on that multi-million dollar investment. […]
Spreadsheet risk. How worried should we be?
The risk of error in the misuse of Excel spreadsheets has been widely reported, with recent high profile mistakes hitting the headlines. Many of us who rely on Excel to do our work are thinking, ‘there but for the grace of God go I…..’ So how worried should we be? The good news is that […]
Openbox release notes: December update v0.8.21
Since the end of the Openbox beta round 3 in October, we’ve been hard at work fixing the issues our beta users have found and implementing their feature requests. Here is the complete list to date. New features Create LAMBDAs from Openbox calculations. Read LAMBDAs from Excel and convert to Openbox calculations. “Unfold” recursive LAMBDAs […]
What does Lambda mean?
Those of you, like me, who follow Excel on social media (do your children take the p*** for this the way mine do?) may have seen a new article this week. Microsoft has announced a new feature in Excel called Lambda (λ). Lambda matters a lot. Both because of what it allows Excel to do, […]
The Multi-Billion Dollar Excel Error that didn’t happen today
Excel is involved in every major transaction, every capital investment, every business sale, large or small and most financial forecasts. Decisions worth billions of dollars every single day are based on Excel models. Recent weeks have seen multiple headlines about Excel errors. Excel has been blamed for major losses, and in the case of UK […]
Harder, Better, Faster
A Faster Audit? We set ourselves the challenge of looking at the financial model audit process to see how we can make it faster for our clients. For those of you un-familiar with the typical audit process, it usually goes something like this: Engage auditors around 1 month prior to bid / financial close Initial […]
The Beginning of the end? U.K. PFI contract expiry
When I was setting out in PPP / PFI as a fresh young analyst, the idea that these 20+ year deals would one day reach contract expiry seemed an unimaginably far-off prospect. However, as I survey my many grey hairs in the mirror, that time is now upon us and there are interesting times ahead […]
The pain of being audited
Nobody likes to be scrutinized, and to have a financial model audited is a very public form of scrutiny. I have had my models audited many times, and it is not generally a fun experience. My rational brain tells me that it has to be done and that a thorough audit is a good thing, […]
An end to audit iterations
Why we at Gridlines decided to throw out the concept of financial model audit iterations. Iteration based charging is the norm in the financial model audit sector. This means that the price of an audit will be quoted assuming a fixed number of iterations, usually 3-4, and then there will be a supplementary charge – […]
Public Health England’s COVID-19 Excel Error
Here at Gridlines, we are always banging on about spreadsheet risk and the risk of errors in Excel. Usually, we keep it light: “The world’s largest legal weed business had its accounts go up in smoke after a spreadsheet error caused it to underreport its losses.” Or perhaps even….. “Bargain Booze’s spreadsheet hell sinks the […]
Openbox Beta: Round 1 Retrospective
Round 1 Retrospective It feels like only last week that we kicked off the beta process, and here we at the end of Round 2. There has been a huge amount of input from our beta users, and we’re incredibly grateful for their time – particularly during the current crisis – in making Openbox more […]
Your Openbox questions answered
Well, that was quite a week! Watching Kenny doing the Openbox demo on Wednesday ranks among the most stressful things I’ve ever done. I’m sure it was pretty high pressure for him too! But we were fully prepared, well practised, and it all worked on the day. Thank you to everyone who attended, or watched […]
The Business Analysis Lifecycle
As modellers it’s easy to focus on the technical details within a model and to lose sight of the bigger picture. The business analysis lifecycle is a framework which is useful in putting into context what we are doing as modellers, and more importantly, why we are doing it. Kenny explains the framework in this […]
The Disconnect Between Modellers and Business Decisions
I was talking to someone a few weeks ago about a joint project team. This person referred to someone in the team as being “just the modeller”. That really irritated me. It annoys me when people view modelling as being easy, something for the juniors, something that anyone can do. In my experience this is […]
Understanding our Bias as Modellers
Our bias as modellers Our human biases can sometimes get in the way of effective analysis. Whenever you are changing something in your model, running a sensitivity or trying to answer an analytical question, it is always useful to create a hypothesis about what you think is going to happen. For instance, when the IRR […]
