Financial Modelling
The BPS Modelling Standards
"The Best Practice Spreadsheet Modelling Standards are professional standards in spreadsheet development, maintenance and usage. The Standards are the result of many years of experience at the forefront of the Microsoft Excel based spreadsheet modelling sector, combined with a detailed understanding of the needs of both spreadsheet model developers and spreadsheet model users.
The primary objectives of the Standards are to:
- Improve quality & transparency
- Ensure user-friendliness
- Decrease spreadsheet model development time & cost
- Minimise risk of errors
- Allow efficient sharing of model development methodologies
- Prevent model redundancy
- Align model developers & model users
The Standards are comprehensive and cover every area of the spreadsheet development, maintenance and usage process." website
The FAST Modelling Standard
"The FAST modeling standard was pioneered by John Richter and Morten Siersted over 10 years ago and is now used by thousands of modelers across the globe as a ’shared language’ for modeling.
The Signatories to the FAST Modeling Standard believe financial models must be as simple as possible. Without simplicity supported by rigorous structure a financial model will be poorly suited to its sole purpose – supporting informed business decisions.
The Standard advocates a philosophy of good financial model design rules founded on the acronym FAST: flexible, accurate, structured, and transparent. It advocates transparent model structure and clear, crisp modeling style.
The Standard has been developed from the experience of industry practitioners who have learned simple techniques to replace overly-clever ‘good ideas’ that proved bad in practice over time. It documents a skilled craft that is functional within the realities of the business environment. As a minimum objective, models must be free of fundamental omissions and logical errors, and this outcome must be achieved under short lead times. However, a good model must achieve more than this minimum standard. It must be easily used and reviewed by others and readily adaptable as circumstances change." website