Why spreadsheets fail at cash flow (and what to use instead)

Short answer: a spreadsheet can describe your cash flow, but it can't watch it. Every number arrives by hand, every error is silent, and the sheet never warns you about a cash gap. An automated setup builds cash flow from live bank transactions instead.

The three failure points

1. Manual statement entry. Someone copies bank statements into the sheet every week. It costs hours, and a single skipped row quietly corrupts the balance — you find out weeks later, if at all.
2. Formulas don't survive people. Insert a row, break a range. Categories drift between teammates. The file forks into "final_v2_REAL" and nobody knows which one is true.
3. A sheet can't approve a payment. Decisions happen in chat, leave no trail, and a payment edited after approval still goes out under the old "ok".

What an automated setup looks like

This is how it works in i37b:

• Connect a bank once through a banking aggregator — new transactions sync on their own. No connection available? Import statements from XLSX; reports work the same either way.
• Cash flow and P&L build themselves from live transactions, with charts you can pin to a dashboard.
• Payments follow approval rules — limits and roles, re-checked on every edit of the payment, so nothing slips past after the fact.

Moving off the spreadsheet

1. Create a company and invite the team — roles keep owners, managers and accountants seeing exactly what they should.
2. Import the last few months of statements, or connect the bank.
3. Open the cash flow report — it's already built from your real transactions.

The Free plan includes the core finance module — accounting, reports and payment approvals. No credit card required.