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Every finance team is being asked the same question: Should we be using AI to build our models? The Ankura OCFO® team ran identical prompts through Claude for Excel, M365 Copilot (Agent Mode), ChatGPT in Excel, Shortcut (Free Tier – Open SourceModel), and Shortcut (Pro Tier) against a fictional company (Fieldstone Retail Holdings, approximately $180 million revenue, three entities).
The three test scenarios — a Long-Range Plan, 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast, and Customer Profitability Analysis — were selected because they mirror common financial modeling exercises in PE-backed finance and operations environments. AI was used to generate the fictional company data and over 500 word prompts for each scenario.
The goal was to establish a baseline comparison of AI financial modeling tools available on the market. What did we find? All five tools produced structurally complete models in 7-10 minutes, but no tool produced a production-ready model. Every tool had fundamental formula mechanics wrong or an incomplete, inconsistent structure. The value today is in scaffolding and structure; the formulas still require meaningful human rework. Critically, each prompt was delivered as a single pass with no iteration or follow-up, and identical prompts were copied across all five tools to isolate baseline capability. If a tool asked a follow-up question, the default was to accept its recommendation. With iterative prompting utilizing currently available features, results would likely improve.
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