Your 2027 Plan Depends on a Spreadsheet Only One Person Understands

The 2027 plan is ready for review. Leadership is looking at hiring, spending, and investment requests, and the forecast appears to give the business a clear picture of what it can commit to next year. 

Then someone asks a simple question: where did that number come from? 

The answer usually sits with one person. They know which reports to pull, which figures need to be adjusted, why a particular assumption changed, and which parts of the model need attention when something does not tie. The spreadsheet may be accessible to the team, but the knowledge behind it is not. 

That may not feel like a problem while the person is available. It becomes one when they are on vacation during a critical reporting period, move into another role, or leave the business. Someone else may have access to the file and still be unable to update it, validate the result, or explain what changed. 

The spreadsheet itself is not necessarily the issue. The bigger question is whether the finance systems behind the 2027 plan are understandable enough that someone else can follow the numbers, challenge the assumptions, and keep the process moving. 

What Leadership Needs to Understand Before Approving the 2027 Plan 

A forecast is only as useful as the reasoning behind it. When leadership is considering another round of hiring, a major investment, or a new spending commitment, they should be able to understand what is driving the numbers without relying entirely on the person who built the model. 

Where do the actual results come from? Which assumptions are driving revenue, payroll, expenses, and cash? Which adjustments happen outside the accounting system? How are changes reviewed? Which version represents the plan that was actually approved? 

These are not questions about whether someone knows how to use Excel. They are questions about whether the business can understand and challenge its own financial plan. 

A model can be technically correct and still be difficult for anyone else to work with. A revenue forecast may look reasonable, for example, but if only one person knows which customer assumptions were manually adjusted, leadership cannot easily test what happens when those assumptions change. A payroll forecast may be accurate, but if the person who built it is the only one who understands how hiring timing and compensation changes were incorporated, the model becomes harder to maintain as the year develops. 

That is why we would not treat this as a spreadsheet problem first. We would look at the process that produces the spreadsheet. 

The Spreadsheet Is Usually Not Where the Dependency Starts 

The person maintaining the forecast may also be the person who knows how the month-end numbers are assembled, which reconciliation differences can remain open, how recurring journal entries are calculated, or which adjustments need to happen before management reporting is finalized. 

That is why documenting the forecast by itself often does not solve the problem. If the forecast depends on reporting steps that only one person understands, the business has documented the output without capturing the process behind it. 

The point is not that every finance process needs a detailed manual. It is that leadership should know where critical financial information depends on knowledge that has never been made accessible to anyone else. 

The same applies to tax or statutory reporting where the process depends on specific information, decisions, or deadlines. Requirements vary by business and jurisdiction, but the underlying question is the same: could someone else step in and understand what needs to happen? 

Use the Holiday Test to Find Where Reporting Would Stall 

One of the simplest ways to expose these dependencies is to take the usual owner out of the process. 

Imagine that person is unavailable for two weeks during a period when the finance team still has to produce the forecast, close the books, process payroll, or deliver management reporting. Could someone else find the inputs, complete the work, deal with a routine exception, and explain the result to leadership? 

The answer usually falls into one of three categories. Another person can run and validate the process. Another person can handle part of it but still needs the owner’s guidance. Or the process effectively stops without the owner. 

The last two are where the dependency becomes a business issue. 

A backup who knows where the spreadsheet is stored is not necessarily a backup who can run the process. If they need to call the owner to find out which report to use, why a number was adjusted, or whether an exception can be ignored, the business has not really transferred the process. 

Start with the areas where a disruption would matter most. Cash, payroll, reporting deadlines, and information supporting major decisions deserve more attention than a process that can safely wait until the usual owner returns. 

Document the Logic Another Person Needs to Reproduce the Numbers 

Useful documentation does more than tell someone where to click. It gives another qualified person enough context to understand where the information came from, how it moves through the process, what assumptions or adjustments are applied, and how the result is checked. 

That includes source systems and reports, update steps, formulas or mappings, manual adjustments, validation checks, exception handling, deadlines, and the people responsible for preparing, reviewing, and approving the work. 

The part that is often missing is the reasoning behind the process. 

If an adjustment is made every month, someone taking over needs to know what triggers it and what supports it. When an assumption changes, they need to know who can change it and how that decision is approved. A report that relies on a manual step outside the accounting system should also make that dependency visible. Otherwise, someone can follow the documented steps exactly and still produce a number that does not make sense. 

That is where finance process improvement should begin. Not with a bigger procedure manual, but with identifying the knowledge the business cannot afford to lose. 

A practical test is to have another qualified person use the documentation without relying on the usual owner. The questions they ask will often reveal more about the strength of the process than another round of editing the instructions. 

Strengthen Finance Systems Around the Workflow 

Once the dependency is clear, the solution is not automatically new software. Better documentation may be the answer, while other situations may require responsibilities to be clarified. A reporting workflow may also need to change, particularly when the business has outgrown a process that relies on repeated exports, manual transfers, or adjustments that are difficult for anyone else to trace.

A controlled spreadsheet can still be a reasonable finance tool when the data is reliable, the logic can be reviewed, and the process does not depend on one person’s memory. The problem is when the technology is being asked to compensate for a process nobody else fully understands. 

That is why we would look at the workflow before recommending a system change. If people are repeatedly moving information between systems or rebuilding reports manually, the technology may be part of the issue. But if nobody knows who owns an assumption or who is responsible for reviewing an exception, replacing the software will not solve that problem. 

The right finance systems should make the process easier to understand, maintain, review, and hand off. tFG’s approach to ERP and finance systems considers the existing finance process and what leadership needs the system to accomplish before determining what should change.  

Make Business Continuity Planning Practical for Finance 

Business continuity planning often focuses on systems, access, and backups. Finance has another dependency that is easier to overlook: knowledge. 

Someone can have access to the accounting system and still not know how the business gets from the underlying transactions to the numbers leadership uses to make decisions. That is why backup coverage needs to mean more than giving someone access to a shared folder. 

The backup should be able to perform the work, recognize when something is unusual, understand when an issue needs escalation, and know where the supporting information lives. Planned absences are a useful opportunity to test this without waiting for a crisis. Let the backup run the process while the usual owner is unavailable. If the process immediately generates questions that only the owner can answer, those questions are telling you where the dependency sits. 

The same principle applies when systems, reporting requirements, or planning assumptions change. Documentation and backup responsibilities need to change with them. 

For some businesses, the answer will be stronger internal coverage. Others may need additional finance expertise during a transition, system implementation, or process improvement effort. The important thing is to understand the gap before deciding how to fill it. 

Before You Approve the Plan, Ask Who Else Could Run It 

A 2027 plan should not depend on one person’s memory to remain useful. Leadership does not need every executive to understand every formula in the model. But someone other than the person who built it should be able to trace the important numbers, explain the assumptions behind them, understand the adjustments, and determine whether the results still make sense when circumstances change. 

If that cannot happen, the issue is bigger than documentation. The business has concentrated too much financial knowledge in one place. 

That matters because the commitments being made from the plan will outlast the planning cycle. A hiring decision, investment, or spending commitment may still need to be evaluated months from now, when actual results differ from the assumptions used to build the original forecast. Leadership needs a finance process that can adapt with the business, not one that depends on finding the same person every time a question comes up. 

The goal is not to make the spreadsheet easier to hand off. It is to make the financial thinking behind the plan part of the business rather than part of one person’s memory. 

If your team has critical finance processes that depend heavily on one person, tFG can help assess the workflows, reporting dependencies, and systems behind them and determine where process improvement or additional finance expertise would make the biggest difference.