Go Fig vs. Manual Spreadsheets

The Comparison at a Glance

Capability	Manual Spreadsheets	Go Fig
Data gathering	Hours of exports and copy-paste	Automatic sync from all sources
Data freshness	Stale immediately after export	Real-time or scheduled updates
Error rate	High (manual handling)	Low (automated pipelines)
Month-end close	2-3 weeks typical	3-5 days typical
Learning curve	Already familiar	Uses existing Excel skills
Cost	Staff time (~20+ hrs/week)	Subscription + implementation

Why Finance Teams Use Manual Spreadsheets

Excel remains the most popular tool in finance for good reasons:

• Flexibility: Build any analysis without IT involvement
• Familiarity: Everyone knows how to use it
• Control: Full visibility into calculations
• Speed: Quick ad-hoc analysis without waiting for reports

The problem isn’t Excel itself—it’s the manual data preparation required to feed your spreadsheets.

Where Manual Spreadsheets Fall Short

Data gathering consumes 60% of time: Finance teams report spending the majority of their time exporting data, cleaning formats, and copy-pasting between systems—not analyzing.

Errors compound: Every manual step introduces error risk. One wrong copy-paste can cascade through an entire financial model.

Version chaos: “Final_v3_ACTUAL_USE_THIS.xlsx” proliferates as teams email spreadsheets back and forth.

No audit trail: It’s difficult to trace where numbers came from or how they were transformed.

Doesn’t scale: Each new data source or entity multiplies the manual work.

How Go Fig Solves the Data Problem

Go Fig automates the painful parts of spreadsheet work while preserving the benefits:

Automatic data centralization: Connect your ERP, CRM, databases, and other spreadsheets. Data flows automatically into one unified source.

Excel sync: Push clean, post-processed data directly into your existing spreadsheet templates. Your formulas, charts, and formatting stay intact.

Scheduled updates: Set data to refresh hourly, daily, or on-demand. No more manual exports.

Full audit trail: See exactly where every number came from and when it was updated.

Semantic consistency: Define metrics once, use them everywhere. No more conflicting definitions.

What Doesn’t Change

Go Fig enhances spreadsheet workflows—it doesn’t replace them:

• You still build models in Excel
• You still use your existing templates
• You still have full control over analysis
• You still export to CSV if you want to

The difference: your spreadsheets are fed by clean, automated data instead of manual copy-paste.

When to Choose Each Approach

Stick with manual spreadsheets if:

• You have 1-2 simple data sources
• Data changes infrequently
• You’re a small team with limited systems

Choose Go Fig if:

• Data lives in 5+ systems
• You spend more than 10 hours/week on data preparation
• Month-end close takes more than a week
• You need real-time or near-real-time data
• Errors in financial data keep occurring

The ROI Calculation

A typical finance team member earning $120K/year who spends 20 hours/week on data preparation represents ~$60K in annual data prep cost—just for one person.

Go Fig typically reduces this time by 75-90%, freeing capacity for actual analysis while improving data accuracy.