I’ve spent years in finance and understand why Excel has become a go-to tool.

As the CFO at Lightyear, I’ve seen firsthand how effective Excel can be. It’s long been the backbone of my finance team and teams around the world. It’s flexible, familiar, and incredibly powerful in the right hands. In fact, 90% of CFOs still rely on Excel to manage their key financial processes.

But I noticed that as my businesses grew, so did the demands on our finance function. And while Excel still remains useful, it’s no longer enough on its own. The other day, I came across a statistic that said nearly half of CFOs admit they need better tools for financial forecasting and reporting.

If you're feeling the same pressure, you're not alone. It might be time to rethink your reliance on spreadsheets, especially when it comes to accounts payable (AP).

In this article, I’ll walk you through 4 clear signs that it’s time for you to move away from Excel and upgrade to AP automation.

Your first sign to upgrade to an automated AP is your growing invoice volume.

I remember speaking to a finance lead at a mid-sized business who was trying to keep up with their growing invoice volume using Excel. At first, it worked fine for them, but then the invoices became harder to track.

The AP Manager told me their team was dealing with frequent data entry mistakes, which delayed approvals and held up payments to suppliers. That’s what pushed him to start exploring AP automation.

However, he was initially hesitant, thinking it only worked with the big-name ERPs, which wasn’t what they had in place. They thought automation was only for companies with sophisticated systems.

But the reality is that because AP automation tools integrate with so many different types of software, they didn’t need to overhaul their setup. I told them, ‘You can plug this into what you’re already using and still get all the benefits like accuracy, efficiency, and consistency in how invoices are handled.’ And they did. It completely changed the way their team worked. 

I’ve seen this happen time and again, and no matter the size of the business, once they make the switch, they wonder how they ever managed without it.

This third sign to upgrade is one I’ve learned the hard way.

I have an Excel spreadsheet in my system that the CEO and I share. However, sometimes, I make changes to it, and he does not understand why, and vice versa. We're essentially using it in slightly different ways for the same task.

When you open an Excel sheet to multiple users, the logic, formatting, and regular workflows that you rely on can easily be overwritten or distorted, especially if others are using it differently.

Excel does many things well, but it falls short when it comes to managing user access and responsibilities. You can lock cells or protect sheets, but you can’t truly assign roles like viewer, approver, or admin within the file itself. This means anyone with access can see or change more than they should, which introduces significant risks to data integrity and compliance.

AP automation has solved this problem for us. I can now assign permissions based on job roles so approvers only see what’s relevant to their department, while admins can manage users and workflows. It’s given us far more control and has drastically reduced the chances of unauthorised access or costly errors.

The best part for a growing business like ours is that every user action, whether approving, editing or rejecting, is time-stamped and recorded, giving us full traceability and accountability. AP automation offers us control and visibility, and it’s exactly what I needed to stay compliant as we scale.