Features

A professional spreadsheet auditing solution

“My compliments on this tool. It is absolutely GREAT!” (Sarbanes Oxley consultant, USA).

Rainbow Analyst Professional has been designed for corporate use by spreadsheet designers, developers and users. It is currently being used in offices around the world by organisations ranging from individual consultancies (such as the Sarbanes Oxley consultant quoted above) to multi-billion-dollar global corporations. Our larger corporate customers include:

• The German operation of one of the global “big five” auditing and advisory firms with more than 80,000 employees in over 90 countries. In Germany this firm is one of the leading auditing and advisory firms and has more than 6,000 employees at over 15 locations.
• An Australian water company responsible for managing more than Aus$8 billion in water supply, sewerage and drainage assets for nearly 4 million customers.
• The Netherlands head office of a global investment management firm with over €40 billion under management.
• An Australian insurance company with offices in 45 countries and more than 10,000 staff worldwide.
• An agency of the Dutch government supporting sustainable economic development through over 40 programmes and projects.
• The UK offices of one of the “big four” global real estate advisers, with a team of over 12,500 property professionals and a system operating across 150 cities in 45 countries.

“It really is a great product and recently saved my bacon by finding a $500,000 error in my budget for next year. An error of this amount would have had a major impact on our results” (Financial controller, Australia).

“I tried it out on 2 large files and I have bought it for the comparisons alone! Truly an excellent addin, thank you very much” (Government actuary, UK)

“Up until now it has taken us days to trawl through models but your add-in has reduced this to a matter of hours. It is very powerful and well worth the money” (Treasury manager, Australia)

Powerful analysis and audit functionality

Have you ever wondered why it takes so long to audit a spreadsheet model, and thought that there must be a quicker and more effective way? Rainbow Analyst is a sophisticated add-in (for Microsoft Excel 2000 to 2007) that delivers considerable time savings in the audit process through a combination of diagnostic reports, visual highlighting or mapping of potential problems, and interactive logic tracking.

Rainbow Analyst’s wide range of analysis functions (see below and on other pages) can detect errors which would be hard to spot through manual checking, however exhaustive. If you have ever wished you could see at a glance where potential errors might be lurking in a spreadsheet model, with Rainbow’s functions at your disposal you will readily be able to:

• analyse the logic of any individual cell and spot potential inconsistencies;
• check how consistently formulas have been copied across rows and down columns;
• see where model inputs really are, as opposed to where they are indicated;
• find row differences, hard-coded numbers, complex formulas and other problems;
• see the overall flow of logic between different sheets in a workbook;
• analyse differences between workbooks, worksheets or tables in a sheet;
• find links to other Excel workbooks, and trace comments and names.

Rainbow Analyst is simple to use; you can access all its features (including a detailed User Guide) by clicking on the Rainbow drop-down menu (below). In addition there is a toolbar for quick access to Rainbow’s key functions.

Rainbow functions summary

The first four items on the Rainbow drop-down menu and the Rainbow toolbar are powerful “floodlight” functions, which are probably the first ones you’ll want to use when starting to analyse a spreadsheet:

• Summary Report gives you a quick overview of a workbook, and lists data for each sheet which can already start to suggest possible problem areas;
• Dependency Map shows you the role of each cell in the logic of the spreadsheet, and highlights potential issues such as blank input cells;
• Inter-Sheet Logic provides a very fast analysis of logic flows between sheets, with a matrix-style report that lets you drill down for detailed information;
• Formula Groups highlights (and reports on) groups of copied formulas, so that you can easily spot inconsistencies and adjustments.;

The next four items on the Rainbow menu or toolbar are “spotlight” functions which zoom in to examine specific details:

• Workbook Reports lets you generate detailed reports on links to other workbooks, comments (cell notes) and/or defined names in the workbook;
• Report-Maps provides reports on dependencies, potential errors (e.g. hard-coded numbers) and other cell types, combined with cumulative overlapping worksheet maps;
• Comparisons is one of the most comprehensive comparison functions you will find, and is a key tool for control of versions and scenarios;
• Cell Inspector is a powerful interactive function which lets you trace the logic of any individual cell at a glance, and can significantly speed up a spreadsheet audit (see below for more information).

The third group of items on the Rainbow menu (including the last two buttons on the toolbar) let you manage various aspects of a workbook, mainly to do with formatting and protection.

And the final group of items on the Rainbow menu are utility functions that put you in control of how Rainbow Analyst operates.

There is much more to Rainbow’s capabilities than we can describe here. You can see a simple example of Rainbow Analyst at work on our Example page, and for a detailed explanation, you can read the full User Guide. And to try it yourself, you can visit our Download page for a free 30-day evaluation copy.