Use Excel add-in for planning
Important
This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, go to What's new or changed in Dynamics 365 Finance. For the latest release plans, go to Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Cloud for Industry release plans.
| Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
|---|---|---|
| Users by admins, makers, or analysts | - | 
Mar 22, 2024 |
Business value
An Excel add-in provides users with familiarity and increases user adoption by allowing them to contribute and collaborate to their plans using Excel.
Feature details
Users have the option to use Excel to contribute and interact with planning. Working with an Excel add-in helps users with:
Familiarity and user adoption: Excel is a widely used and familiar tool among finance professionals. Adding Excel capabilities to an ERP system ensures that users can leverage their existing Excel skills, leading to quicker adoption of the ERP's financial planning and analysis features.
Data integration and efficiency: Financial planning and analysis professionals often spend a significant amount of time importing data from various sources or manually entering data into Excel, leading to errors and inefficiencies.
Ad-hoc analysis: The add-in allows for quick data retrieval and analysis, helping financial planning and analysis professionals respond more efficiently to urgent requests.
Audit trail: Excel provides audit trails and version control, aiding data accuracy and traceability.
Streamlined workflow: The add-in streamlines the entire financial planning and analysis workflow. From data integration to reporting (Excel out-of-the-box feature of creating pivot table reports for analysis), saving time and effort.
Advanced modeling and scenarios: Excel has powerful out-of-the-box features for financial modeling and scenario planning. Finance professionals can build complex financial models, perform "what-if" analysis, and create multiple scenarios to evaluate different outcomes.
Reduced dependency on IT: Finance teams can become more self-reliant with Excel add-ins, reducing their dependence on IT or technical staff for ad hoc reporting and analysis tasks.
