By Hiran de Silva
There’s an increasingly fashionable confidence in the Excel world—especially around Power Query. And to some extent, it’s deserved. Power Query introduces essential principles of data handling and automation to spreadsheet users who never previously encountered the concepts of transformation pipelines, data modelling, and batch refresh cycles. It’s a fine screwdriver.
But somewhere along the way, the screwdriver replaced the chair.
The Cult of the Tool
Imagine asking a carpenter to build you a chair. Instead, he proudly demonstrates an extraordinary screwdriver—chrome-plated, torque-optimized, artisanal. You nod politely. “Where’s my chair?” you ask. He looks puzzled. “But didn’t you see my magical screwdriver?”
And so it is with Power Query. Legions of LinkedIn experts and YouTube educators showcase the dazzling capabilities of the tool. But when business users ask, “Where’s my budgeting system? Where’s my live report? Where’s my process?”—they’re met with silence or told to adjust their expectations.
You don’t live in a chair, the logic goes. You don’t need one. Why would you want one? Chairs are obsolete. Look how amazing this screwdriver is.
The Power Query Cul-de-Sac
Let’s acknowledge something first: Power Query is great. It removes the need for fragile external links. It brings multiple datasets into a single model. It teaches valuable skills.
But then—silently—it drives users into a cul-de-sac. You can’t go further. You can’t deliver the thing management actually needs: a live, collaborative budgeting process in the same familiar reporting format.
Instead, Power Query gives you a pivot table. It gives you a batch process. It gives you something else. And the cost of that something else—at the enterprise level—is enormous.
The Realisation from the Budgeting Test
When I posed a genuine question on LinkedIn—how long does it take Power Query to consolidate nearly 400 filled-in budget templates across 145 roll-ups—I was looking for real-world insight. Several experts stepped up. Their solutions showed that, yes, under good conditions, the refresh can be brought down to 10 seconds (from an initially feared 30-40 minutes!).
That’s great news, right?
Well, yes—and no.
Because even then, we still face two fundamental deal-breakers:
- The output is a pivot table, not the original report format managers expect.
- It’s a batch process, not live—budgets have to be submitted, consolidated, and redistributed. Collaboration stalls.
Management doesn’t want to wait. They want to tweak and negotiate budgets in real-time. They want the chair—not a faster screwdriver.
Part Two Got Zero Engagement
The first post got high engagement. But when I asked the follow-up—the bigger end-to-end question—there was radio silence. Only two comments. One suggested asking management how much they’re willing to pay – suggesting that a solution would be expensive. The other, from Mark Proctor, cynically predicted I was trying to plug my “hub and spoke” architecture again—something he considers a fringe hack, unfit for “citizen developers.”
But I wasn’t pushing a method. I was asking a question:
Why is nobody building chairs anymore?
Everyone is so caught up demonstrating the tools that they’ve forgotten the goal. The budgeting process has been replaced by content about budgeting tools. Social media doesn’t reward working solutions—it rewards trending techniques. ‘Doc, a dozen of your patients didn’t make it through your signature surgical operation’. ‘Ah true but, look at this incredible scalpel!’
What Are We Missing?
This brings me to a historical sketch—1066.
The English were defeated by the Normans at the Battle of Hastings. But imagine if just one English soldier at the top of the hill had a machine gun. It’s not that machine guns are impossible in 1066—they require only three concepts that already existed separately: gunpowder, ballistics, and repeatable machinery. All of these existed in 1066.
But no one had all three pieces of information, and nobody joined the dots.
That’s exactly where we are with Excel budgeting today.
We have the parts.
But they aren’t being combined. The screwdriver, in the shape of Power Query, is admired, but the machine gun remains undiscovered.
The Live Chair Exists
I’ve demonstrated it countless times!
- Live consolidation across 400 budgets—no Power Query, no external links.
- Same format as the budget templates—no pivot tables.
- Drilldown and audit trail—who changed what and when.
- Real-time collaboration—on Zoom or Teams, watching changes happen as they’re made.
This isn’t a fantasy. It’s already built. It’s Excel doing what Excel was always capable of doing—just with the right pieces, the right ideas, joined together.
So Why Are We Stuck?
We’re stuck because nobody’s teaching this. Not on YouTube. Not in courses. Not in influencer-led social media threads.
Because building a working budgeting system—one that meets management’s real needs—is harder to record on screen with screen recoding tools. It’s less click-worthy than demonstrating a clever M code transformation or pivot table trick. Or keyboard shortcut!
So we’re left with a carpenter’s union that no longer makes chairs. They make tutorials about screwdrivers.
And the businesses? They’re either stuck with fragile external links or detoured into expensive FP&A cloud tools that require even more spreadsheet work to prepare inputs and clean outputs.
The result? Spreadsheets everywhere, but no spreadsheet system. No structure. No real outcomes.
Final Question: What’s the Missing Link?
Just like the 1066 machine gun sketch, the answer lies in joining three existing elements:
- Excel’s interface and flexibility
- A relational backend like Access
- ADO/VBA to create live two-way interaction
It’s not a new tool. It’s a new way of combining tools we already have oodles of.
And the key? Moving the data model outside the spreadsheet—where it belongs.
That’s the chair. It’s been there all along.
Next up: Part Two – The Missing Link that Changes Everything.
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