Excel vs. Vibe Coding

What is “vibe coding”?

The term comes from AI researcher Andrej Karpathy: you describe what you want – and AI builds it. Tools like Lovable, Replit, or Claude Code generate a complete application from a description – with database, login, and hosting. No programming required.

For finance teams, this means: instead of waiting for IT, a controller describes their ideal dashboard – and gets it in hours instead of months.

Real-world example

“Build me a dashboard with cash flow, burn rate, and forecasts.” – A CFO types this sentence into Lovable, and AI generates a web application with interactive charts. The interface automatically adapts to the user’s role.

“Claude Code is the new Excel. Vibe coding is the new pivot table. Agentic AI tools are on track to replace Excel as the baseline skill of knowledge work.”

– John Hwang, Nextword (March 2026)

Why Excel is still around

96% of all FP&A professionals use Excel at least weekly (AFP Benchmarking Survey 2025). CFO.com calls it “the glue that binds imperfect systems together.” Everyone knows it, it doesn’t require IT, and different companies speak a common language: .xlsx.

Where vibe coding beats Excel

No formula maintenance nightmare

Nearly 90% of all spreadsheets contain errors – estimates suggest these errors cause worldwide losses of around $100 billion per year. A vibe-coded app has defined data sources and calculation logic – no “who changed this formula?”.

Live data connected more easily

In principle, Excel can also integrate live data – via Power Query or add-ins. But with vibe-coded software, connecting to APIs, databases, and ERP systems is significantly easier and more reliable.

Any file format, any direction

Excel works with tables. A vibe-coded tool can read PDFs, create presentations, automatically verify invoice PDFs, or extract data from emails. Format limitations that are hard boundaries in Excel simply don’t exist here.

Version control with Git

Code lives in Git – every change is documented, traceable, and reversible. No more “V2_final_FINAL_new.xlsx”. The version history is searchable: you can trace exactly where a specific change was made and selectively revert individual changes (cherry-picking) – without resetting the entire dashboard.

Where Excel is still the best choice

Planning and rapid iteration

When you’re building a model that changes daily – new assumptions, new scenarios, quick what-if calculations – Excel is unbeatable. No app can be adjusted as quickly as a well-structured spreadsheet.

One-off, specific analyses

An ad-hoc analysis for the board, a special report for auditors – not everything needs to be automated. For analyses you need once and never again, Excel is often the fastest path.

Universal language

Every auditor, every bank, and every new colleague can open an Excel file. That’s a real advantage – though one that shrinks with every cloud application.

However

Once such a tool is in place – with real-time data and flexible AI integration – planning, what-if scenarios, and ad-hoc analyses often become faster than in Excel. AI can evaluate data instantly, run through scenarios, and visualize results – without anyone having to adjust formulas.

Our take

To be clear: Excel isn’t going to disappear overnight. And yes – with AI plug-ins like Copilot, Claude for Excel, or Gemini add-ins, Excel is actually getting better. The benchmark is rising. But that’s exactly the point: the most powerful AI in finance isn’t the Excel add-ins – it’s coding agents. Tools like Claude Code or Cursor generate not just formulas, but entire applications with databases, API integrations, and automated alerts.

The decisive advantage of vibe-coded tools is complete flexibility across the entire process. You can build an end-to-end workflow:

Connect your data – directly from ERP, bank accounts, CRM

Process your data – automated calculations and consolidation

Display your data – interactive dashboards, role-based

Proactive analysis and notifications – alerts on deviations before anyone asks

Automatic report generation – in your company template, for management and investors in different formats

Building this end-to-end process in Excel is extremely cumbersome and fragile. With a vibe-coded tool, you have complete flexibility over every single step.

This doesn’t mean every controller needs to learn programming. Vibe coding requires a certain infrastructure: deployment, version control, team collaboration – things that are standard for developers but new for finance teams. That’s why the point isn’t to vibe-code yourself, but to use tools that can be deeply adapted to your processes – instead of settling for a rigid spreadsheet.

Conclusion: much of what lives in Excel today can be simplified

Gartner predicts that by 2028, half of all companies will use AI to replace time-consuming bottom-up forecasting processes. The following workflows are still in spreadsheets at most companies today – but in our view will soon move to custom-built or purchased tools. A dedicated article on vibe coding will follow soon.

Budget vs. actual comparison with automatic flagging

Detecting deviations, defining thresholds, escalating automatically – this is a classic use case for a vibe-coded dashboard. In Excel, you only see the deviation when someone manually checks. A dashboard sends you a notification before it becomes critical.

Controlling dashboards with multiple data sources

As soon as data from ERP, CRM, and bank accounts converge, Excel becomes a bottleneck. Three people maintain the same file, formulas break, versions diverge. A dashboard with direct API integration solves the problem at its root.

Recurring monthly and quarterly reporting

If you fill the same structure every month, copy new data, and adjust formatting – then you’re not automating, you’re doing manual work. This workflow can be fully transferred to a dashboard that updates itself.

Liquidity planning with real-time data

Liquidity is time-critical. An Excel sheet updated manually once a week is outdated by definition. A vibe-coded tool can pull together account balances, open invoices, and planned payments in real time.