About Us

The business is owned and operated by David Lynch MBA FCMA - who is passionate about improving the ability of numerate indiviudals through the use of high quality tools (such as Excel and Power BI) in order to significantly improve the quality of decision making in organisations.

We use highly skilled individuals (including David) to deliver contract or project work in relationship to advanced spreadsheets. Generally, all our Associates are of Director level in SMEs or larger organisations where their career has provided an excellent understanding of the objectives of organisations - plus advanced hands-on skills with relevant software (always including Excel).

David's personal history includes operating as Finance Director for medium and large organisations, controlling projects with a value of between £500m and $2.5bn. Partly as a result of developing such large business models, David is recognised as one of the UK's leading independent Excel experts.

As a part of Spreadsheet Architecture his advanced software business and private server farm deliver specialist, secure internet software using Microsoft SQL, SQL Reporting Services, Power BI, and other advanced software systems. 

Our observations after training over 200 Qualified Accountants:

We have delivered Power and Advanced Excel training to over 200 Qualified Accountants over the last 5 years. 

Our standards are high. We expect such highly paid and qualified individuals to be able to create spreadsheets others can follow easily, in a consistent manner, using simple functions, in an efficient and effective way, with evidence there are no intrinsic errors.  

Before individuals book on a course, we want them to have our "3rd party genuine view" of their skills. Most Accountants are good to very good at specific and limited aspects of Excel. Overall, however, the scores are often quite low.  Of course - when you compare Accountants with the general public, they are a mile ahead - but compared to what they should know, there are whole sections missing. In the past, we have allowed experienced individuals to attend the Advanced Course - but we found that they consistently over-rate their experience and skills. When the incorrect level of training is booked, the maximum benefit of the course is lost.

Over this period we have noticed a number of common factors - and we would like to share them with you - for Finance Directors, this is important: 

• Accountants' Excel skills are almost entirely self taught: Fewer than 2% have bought a book on Excel for themselves.
• Their expertise ranges from "poor" to "excellent". The average before training is "Mediocre".
• Generally, individuals over-estimate their abilities by more than 100%.
• Knowledge of specific, complex areas in Excel can be quite deep - but the individual's overall knowledge can be very narrow.
• Most spreadsheets are created as entirely unique, and are difficult to understand for anyone but the creator.
• Accountants rarely automate even the simplest of processes - because they don't know how to automate Excel.
• Even though 85% of Excel spreadsheets are known to have significant errors, they have not implemented standards or protocols for colleagues to follow (you would not expect that in any other profession).