Comparison · RecurBoard and Excel
RecurBoard or Excel for your subscription figures?
Most subscription businesses on Exact Online start with a spreadsheet. That makes sense, and for small numbers it is the right choice. This page shows where the tipping point lies.
Short answer
Excel works fine up to about a hundred subscriptions, as long as one person maintains the file every month. Beyond that it takes a morning to a day each month and the result is hard to check. RecurBoard calculates the same KPIs from Exact Online automatically, every hour.
The differences at a glance
| Excel | RecurBoard |
|---|---|
| Build it yourself with formulas and pivot tables | Standard, with MRR bridge and cohort analysis |
| Export and clean up every month | Direct connection, read-only via the official Exact login |
| A morning (200 customers) to a day (500 customers) | None: updated automatically every hour |
| Manual corrections without a trail | Fixed calculation rules, the same for everyone |
| Yes, reporting stops when they are away or leave | No |
| By hand, month by month | Entire history under one fixed definition |
| Export each administration and merge by hand | Consolidation across all your Exact administrations (€25 per month) |
| Search the file yourself | In Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot via the MCP connector, for your KPIs, financial reports and all underlying Exact data (from €25 per month) |
| Your Excel licence plus your own hours | Free plan; paid from €50 per month |
Which to choose when?
Choose Excel if
- You have fewer than a hundred subscriptions and little movement each month.
- You want every calculation in your own hands and don't mind the monthly work.
- You need a one-off analysis, not monthly reporting.
Choose RecurBoard if
- You have a hundred subscriptions or more, or are growing towards that fast.
- An investor, bank or accountant asks how you arrive at your MRR.
- You don't want to depend on one person and one file.
- You have several entities or administrations and want one overall picture.
- You want to see churn and retention as it happens, not on the twelfth of the following month.
What you actually do in Excel every month
Anyone calculating MRR from Exact Online in a spreadsheet goes through the same steps each time: export invoices, separate recurring from one-off revenue, convert annual and quarterly contracts to a monthly value, put this month next to last month and decide per customer whether it is new, expansion, contraction or churn.
That is doable. The problem is what happens next: the file is out of date the moment it is finished, a different definition means redoing every previous month, and nobody else can check it. The full method is in our article on calculating MRR from Exact Online.
Frequently asked questions
Can I keep using my existing Excel file alongside RecurBoard?
Yes. RecurBoard only reads from Exact Online and changes nothing in your administration or your files. It is sensible to keep your spreadsheet for the first few months to compare the results.
Why does my MRR in Excel differ from RecurBoard?
Usually because of differences in definition: how you spread annual contracts, whether one-off fees count and when a cancellation takes effect. RecurBoard applies one fixed definition to your entire history, so months are comparable.
Can RecurBoard combine the figures of several entities?
Yes. With consolidation (€25 per month) RecurBoard merges your Exact Online administrations into one picture: subscription KPIs plus P&L, balance sheet and cash flow. In Excel that means exporting each administration and combining the files by hand.
From how many customers is a tool worth it?
The tipping point is around a hundred subscriptions. Below that a spreadsheet is manageable; above it, it costs more time each month than a subscription to a tool, and the risk of errors grows.
More comparisons
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