FP&A AI add-ins listed

Finance professionals are building a new layer on top of Excel: artificial intelligence tools that write formulas, flag anomalies, and run forecast scenarios from plain-language prompts. (support.microsoft.com) Financial planning and analysis, the corporate finance work of budgeting, forecasting, and variance review, still runs heavily on spreadsheets. Microsoft says Copilot in Excel can create and explain formulas, analyze data, import outside data, and edit workbooks with tables, charts, PivotTables, and formulas. (support.microsoft.com, support.microsoft.com) That shift has widened into a market of specialist tools aimed at finance teams rather than general spreadsheet users. Paul Barnhurst’s 2026 guide groups 19 spreadsheet artificial intelligence tools into Excel add-ins, new spreadsheet products, Google Sheets add-ins, and modeling tools, and says many are built for model auditing, charting, data cleaning, and finance workflows. (thefpandaguy.com) The appeal is speed with fewer manual checks. Datarails, an Excel-native financial planning and analysis vendor, says artificial intelligence add-ins add the most value in forecasting, variance analysis, and data preparation, and says finance-focused tools outperform general tools when accuracy and explainability matter. (datarails.com) The technology is also moving deeper into analysis, not just formula help. Microsoft says Copilot in Excel can generate and insert Python code from natural-language prompts, letting users run advanced analysis inside a workbook without writing the code themselves. (support.microsoft.com, github.com) That matters in forecasting because finance teams often need to test several assumptions quickly, then show how the model was built. Microsoft’s support documents say Copilot can generate formula rows and columns, while the newer COPILOT function can return results inside cells but warns users to use native Excel formulas for tasks that require accuracy or reproducibility. (support.microsoft.com, support.microsoft.com) Vendors are selling around that trade-off by promising governance as much as automation. Datarails says its platform keeps teams in Excel while adding a governed, secure data layer and connections to more than 200 accounting, enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, bank, and human resources systems. (datarails.com) Bojan Radojicic, the practitioner behind the list that prompted the discussion, markets training and tool reviews to finance workers trying to use artificial intelligence in modeling and reporting. His site says he has more than 10,000 course members, more than 500,000 social media followers, and a paid membership that includes artificial intelligence lessons, model templates, and tool reviews. (bojanfin.com) The result is not a replacement for spreadsheet judgment so much as a new procurement problem for finance leaders. The tools now range from Microsoft’s built-in Copilot features to Excel-native planning platforms and independent finance modeling assistants, leaving teams to choose how much automation they want inside the spreadsheet they already trust. (support.microsoft.com, thefpandaguy.com, datarails.com)