Banker’s Dashboard vs. manual inputting: 4 ways to save time (and money)

CFOs and controllers might not realize how many hours a week they spend inputting information into their spreadsheet software’s report templates or balance sheet templates until they begin tracking the time for themselves. Just like most people only recognize how much their daily coffee run is eating into their budget once they write down their monthly purchases, time spent logging data can add up without anyone noticing.

Automating your performance tracking with a tool like Banker’s Dashboard can help eliminate many time-consuming activities that were once assumed to be non-negotiable (back when manual reporting, using desktop spreadsheet software, was the only way to keep the board, regulators, auditors and even the management team informed about how the bank was functioning). Along with new tools come innovative ways of envisioning performance—and some very real cost and time savings, too.

Here are a few ways that an automated performance-tracking system can be a game-changer:

• Less wrangling information into Excel report templates for board prep. Mark Swanson, former bank CEO and current performance banking coach at Deluxe, has found that the typical bank spends anywhere from eight to 15 hours a month manually inputting information into Excel report templates to keep the board abreast of critical information. Assuming an average salary of $80,000 for a CFO or controller, that means banks are paying $3,700 to $7,000-plus each year to input information manually for board reporting. In contrast, the same tasks can be accomplished with Banker’s Dashboard in a matter of minutes.

• Fewer (if any) anomalies to research. When it comes to financial report examples in a manual performance-tracking environment, errors within Excel spreadsheets and the general ledger occur frequently. For banks that rely on month-end data to catch these errors, the task of finding anomalies can become unwieldy and unnecessarily complicated.

• Less wasted time (and fewer embarrassing moments) in board and other meetings. “I don’t believe those numbers add up to that total” is one of the most dreaded sentences a banker can hear in a board meeting.

Swanson has seen studies showing that significant errors can be found in 88% of financial spreadsheets. That said, having calculation and other errors discovered by a colleague is not only embarrassing, but it means that the conversation gets bogged down with remedying an anomaly rather than focusing on weightier issues. In other words, the opportunity costs of manually inputting data can really add up.

• Making the most of management time. Banks are increasingly recognizing that having senior individuals spend time inputting numbers into Excel or balance sheet templates is not the best use of their talents. When the mechanics of performance tracking are automated, executives can spend time on value-add activities, such as making savvy decisions about net interest margins, loan yields, and the cost of funds.

According to Swanson, if time lost by manually inputting data is translated into dollars, the totals defray about half the cost of an automated performance-management system like Banker’s Dashboard. “Increasing NIM will easily cover the other half,” adds Swanson.

More advantages of automated performance tracking software

And yet even this dollars-and-cents analysis doesn’t take into consideration all the benefits from automating performance management. Some of the richest advantages come from knowing that all members of a team are using the same assumptions when making calculations. Other advantages arise from having the latest performance-tracking measurements at hand when it comes to financial report examples, rather than relying on information entered manually that may be days or weeks old.

Perhaps the most impressive of all benefits is that automated performance-tracking tools allow a broad range of employees to measure progress on an ongoing basis—and to then act based on facts. The capabilities that Banker’s Dashboard provides, says Swanson, “turn map readers into navigators,” or individuals who can chart a more ambitious path forward for their organizations.