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Thought Leadership

Improve your financial modelling practice

Financial modelling code cover

Author: Excel Community

Published: 12 Nov 2018

ICAEW’s Excel Community has worked with a broad swathe of modelling organisations and experts, taking a half dozen methodologies and paring down to the commonly held, widely accepted beliefs about what constitutes good modelling.

Organisations big and small engage in building spreadsheet financial models to plan their cash flow, assess projects, or investigate acquisitions.

These models are often built ad hoc or without due planning, care and attention, and stories of faulty financial models are common. What’s more, procurers of financial modelling – whether from internal developers or from professional model-building organisations – often struggle to articulate their needs and make sure that they get a quality product.

While there are modelling methodologies and standards aplenty, these are often overly prescriptive or organisation-specific. So ICAEW’s Excel Community has worked with a broad swathe of modelling organisations and experts, taking a half dozen methodologies and paring down to the commonly held, widely accepted beliefs about what constitutes good modelling. Thus, we’ve created the Financial Modelling Code.

This code lets procurers set a neutral best-practice standard for any model they requisition, and provides a basis for good practice for any organisation carrying out their own modelling, whether big or small. The recommendations are high-level and closely aligned to ICAEW’s Twenty Principles for Good Spreadsheet Practice, allowing for each individual modeller to apply their own judgment on how their model should look and feel.

Why read this report?

  • Get an understanding of what distinguishes good financial modelling from bad.
  • Inform a conversation about best practice with a modeller you are considering hiring.
  • See how your own modelling practice compares with the consensus opinion.

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Financial Modelling Code

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Supporting organisations

We are pleased to list the following organisations as supporting organisations of the guidance contained in the Financial Modelling Code:

Amberside logo BDO City Financial Models Clay Matter DWPF
Grant Thornton Lazuli Mazars Microsoft Modano
ModelOff logo Numeritas Operis RICS logo RSM Smith & Willliamson White Box Financial