Comparison
M&A Software vs Excel
Most deal teams run on spreadsheets, and for good reasons: everyone can use one, a model is transparent, and nothing is faster for a one-off analysis. This page is an honest account of where Excel is the right tool for M&A work, where it stops being one, and what a dedicated platform has to offer to justify the change.
- £399/month
- Unlimited users and deals
- TrueValue Agent included
- No credit card required
Where Excel is the right answer
A spreadsheet is the best tool ever made for a bespoke financial model. When an analyst needs to build a returns case with a structure nobody has modelled before, trace every cell, and change an assumption to see what moves, Excel wins and will keep winning. The same is true for a one-off analysis, a quick sensitivity, or a chart for a single meeting. Any platform that tells you to stop using Excel for modelling is selling something.
Excel is also the right answer for a team that runs one deal a year. The overhead of a system of record is only repaid when there is a record worth keeping: several live opportunities, a pipeline that partners want to read, a diligence process with a counterparty on the other end, and documents that have to be found again after completion.
Where the spreadsheet breaks
Each of these is a job a spreadsheet was never designed for and that deal teams press it into anyway.
The pipeline tracker
A tab per deal, a row per stage, updated by whoever last looked. It has no notion of what has to be true to leave a stage, no history of when a deal moved, no health or momentum, and no link to the documents, the diligence or the people. It is a list of opinions about status.
Provenance
A figure in a cell has no source. Was that EBITDA from the filed accounts, the management accounts, the CIM or the last analyst's adjustment? A model can be right and unexplainable, which in front of a committee is the same as wrong.
The same number in five places
Revenue lives in the screening sheet, the model, the IC paper, the offer letter and the pipeline. When it changes, the others drift, and the version in front of the decision is whichever was updated last.
Diligence
A request list is a spreadsheet the counterparty edits and emails back, with answers in a different thread. Chasing is manual. Evidence is an attachment somewhere. Status is reconstructed before every call.
Collaboration and control
Two people cannot safely work one model. There is no audit of who changed what, no roles, and a spreadsheet emailed to a counterparty is out of your control the moment it leaves.
Nothing happens on its own
A spreadsheet does not read a CIM overnight, notice that a buyer went quiet, chase an overdue item or draft the follow-up. Everything it knows, somebody typed.
Side by side
| Stage | Excel and email | Dedicated M&A software |
|---|---|---|
| Financial modelling | Excellent. Bespoke, transparent, fast for one analyst. | Versioned engines for the standard methods, seeded from the accounts, with Excel export for the bespoke work. |
| Pipeline | A tracker of typed statuses. | Stages gated on evidence, history of every move, health and momentum, forecasting. |
| Provenance | None. A number is a number. | Every input labelled with its source and what it is worth; a figure the record lacks stays blank. |
| Diligence | A list emailed back and forth. | A request list the counterparty answers online, chased automatically, evidence on every item. |
| Documents and signature | Word templates, a separate e-signature service, filing by hand. | Drafted from the deal record, signed from the deal, filed back with the certificate. |
| Between meetings | Nothing. | An Agent that reads what arrived, prices it, chases what is late and raises a drifting deal. |
| Cost | Free, plus the analyst hours. | A subscription; in TrueValue's case £399 a month for the whole team. |
How to decide
Count the joins. Every time a figure is retyped from one document into another, every status reconstructed from an inbox, every request chased by hand, is a join a spreadsheet cannot make. A team with a handful of joins a month should keep its spreadsheets. A team with a handful a day is paying for M&A software already, in hours, and not getting one.
Then test the platform on the thing Excel does best. Ask to see the model's assumptions, ask what happens to a figure the accounts do not state, and ask whether the AI can change a number. If the answers are "trust us", "it estimates" and "sometimes", the platform has swapped transparency for convenience and you were right to be sceptical. How to evaluate M&A software goes through the questions in full.
TrueValue's answer is that the engines are deterministic and versioned, an unstated figure stays blank and is named, the AI writes commentary and cannot alter a figure, and every model exports to Excel for the bespoke work that belongs there.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to give up my Excel models?
- No. TrueValue's DCF, LBO and three-statement builders export to Excel, and the extracted accounts can feed a house model. Use the platform as the record and Excel for the bespoke analysis.
Can I import a pipeline from a spreadsheet?
- Yes. Deals and contacts import from CSV with duplicate detection, and the stage list is yours to set.
Is M&A software worth it for a small team?
- It depends on the number of joins, not the number of people. A two-person team running six live deals has more retyping and chasing than a ten-person team running one.
What does the AI do that a spreadsheet cannot?
- Read a document. A CIM or a set of accounts is extracted into figures with their source, scored against your criteria and priced, overnight, and the Agent chases and monitors between meetings. A spreadsheet knows only what somebody typed.
Go deeper
- Best M&A software for deal teamsHow to evaluate the category, honestly.
- TrueValue vs a generic CRMWhat a sales CRM cannot model about a deal.
- Best M&A deal management softwareAn evaluation framework for the category.
- M&A deal management softwarePipeline, stage gates, tasks, milestones and the record of every deal.
- M&A valuation softwareFive methods, deterministic engines, committee-ready reports.
Try it beside your spreadsheet
Import the pipeline, drop in one CIM and compare the first pass with the one you would have built by hand.