Macabacus
Editor's pickThe banker's Excel and PowerPoint productivity add-in
4.6From ~$200/user/yrBest for Any team building models and IC decks in Office
Excel Productivity Add-in
Overview
Macabacus (owned by Corporate Finance Institute) is the standard Excel/PowerPoint/Word add-in for finance professionals: model auditing, formula tracing, linked Excel-to-PowerPoint updates, and brand-compliant formatting shortcuts. Plans start around $200/user/year, and it is near-ubiquitous on banking and PE desktops.
Key features
- Excel-to-PowerPoint/Word linking with refresh
- Formula auditing and error tracing
- 100+ modeling keyboard shortcuts
- Charting tools (waterfalls, footballs fields)
- Shared template and brand libraries
- Model-checking diagnostics
Pros
- Pays for itself in hours saved on decks and models
- Linked deck updates eliminate copy-paste errors
- Low per-seat cost, easy rollout
Cons
- Windows Office-centric; Mac support is limited
- It accelerates Excel — it is not a modeling platform itself