Customer Story

How a 180-location lube center operator replaced 1.75 million Excel formulas.

A national lube center operator replaced 1.75 million Excel formulas and a paper-based P&L sign-off chain with Cube. Every store manager now sees their complete P&L in real time. The paperwork is gone.

Cube is the AI-powered financial intelligence platform that connects bi-directionally to Excel and to source systems like NetSuite, giving finance teams trusted, decision-ready data without leaving their spreadsheets.

180 hrs

Recovered per month

1.75M

Excel formulas replaced

180+

locations with live P&L

How it works

The Situation

A 25-year-old Excel budget that nobody could safely touch.

Every month, the finance team managed a single Excel file with over 200 tabs, 1.75 million formulas, and distribution across 20-plus district managers — each with their own V- and XLOOKUP-linked copies where any overwritten cell could corrupt the entire model.

The P&L sign-off process added another layer of manual work. Store managers received printed copies of their KPI tables, signed them by hand, and passed them up through district managers to back-office administrators and HR — four or five people touching every document every month across 180 locations.

Any change to the model required updating 50-plus files. Budget season meant months of formula-checking anxiety with no confidence that every number a district manager saw matched what finance intended. The budget itself had been in place for at least 25 years — and changing it felt nearly impossible.

Industry

Multi-Location Operator — Automotive Services

Company Size

501–1,000 employees

Locations

180+ stores nationwide

Implementation

3 months, zero consultants

Primary Use Case

P&L distribution, budgeting, monthly close

Stack Before Cube

200-tab Excel file · 1.75M formulas · paper sign-off chain

The Problem

AI alone can't handle your
financial data.

A model nobody dared change. A sign-off chain that ran on paper. And a data validity problem that never went away.

1.75 million formulas in a single file nobody could safely edit

Over 200 tabs, 50-plus linked district manager copies, and 90% lookup formulas. One overwritten cell could break the entire model. Finding the break was a needle-in-a-haystack problem at scale — every month.

200+ tabs · 50+ linked copies

A paper-based P&L sign-off chain across 180 locations

Store managers received printed KPI tables, signed by hand, and passed them up through district managers to back-office and HR — four or five people touching every document every month. Retrieving a historical sign-off meant digging through a physical file.

5 people per sign-off · 180 locations

Budget season meant months of formula-checking anxiety

Any change to the model required updating 50-plus files. No confidence that every district manager number matched what finance intended. A 25-year-old budget structure that felt impossible to replace without breaking everything.

25-year-old model · no safe update path

THE AGENTIC FINANCE LAYER

Stop Chasing Numbers.
Start Mastering the Future.

The Solution

One data layer. Every P&L. Every location.

Cube replaced the 200-tab file, the paper chain, and the formula anxiety — without replacing Excel.

Connected to the existing data warehouse in two weeks. No consultants.
The data engineering team connected Cube to their existing warehouse in roughly two weeks. Once the connection was live, ad hoc reporting was running the same weekend — no waiting, no professional services, no drawn-out rollout. The full annual budget went live November 1, three months after starting in August.Finance owned the process from day one. The data engineer watched Cube's video library the first weekend and had everything needed to build the full model.

The Data Engine →

Every store manager sees their complete P&L. Zero training required.

Store managers sign in through a link in their email. Row-level security maps each manager to their store — they see exactly their P&L, nothing else. SSO with multi-factor authentication is enforced across all 180-plus locations. Rolling out a new month takes two field changes and a republish.

Adoption required zero training for store managers. District managers needed two short videos. The executive team jumped in immediately and was requesting custom views within the first weeks.

Security Administration → →

Excel stays. The 200-tab file doesn't.

Cube's patented bi-directional sync preserved the Excel workflows the executive team and finance staff already knew. Power users kept their spreadsheet environment. The data layer beneath it got structured, governed, and automated.

The 180-tab master file became a single template: update the month in two places, republish the web report, copy the prior month's workflows — and every location is live.

See Spreadsheet functionality → →

How It Happened

From 200-tab Excel to live P&Ls across 180 locations.

Cube unifies your financial data, automates planning and reporting, and puts AI-powered intelligence behind every decision — right inside Excel, Sheets, Slack, and the tools your team already lives in.

Connect the warehouse

The data engineering team connected Cube to the existing data warehouse in roughly two weeks. No outside consultants. The pipeline has been self-sustaining since — two support tickets in the entire deployment.

Build the model

Ad hoc reporting was running the same weekend data was connected. The full annual budget went live November 1 — three months after starting in August. One internal data engineer. No professional services.

Distribute to every location

Every store manager received access via email link — no training, no setup. Role-based security, SSO, and MFA enforced from day one. 180-plus stores live. The paper chain stopped.

The Results

Decision-ready data, everywhere the business works.

The paperwork is gone. The formulas are gone. Every manager has their P&L. And the finance team got 180 hours back.

180 hrs

Manual P&L workflow time recovered every month across store managers, district managers, and back-office staff

1.75M→0

Excel formulas replaced by a single governed data model. Formula-break investigations have stopped.

180+

Store managers with real-time P&L access, replacing limited printed KPI sheets reviewed by hand

0 training

Store managers adopted Cube with no training. District managers needed two short videos. Exec team was in immediately.

"There's a lot more confidence in what's going on and I think it really helps the managers to drive their business."

Jeremy Banas

Data Engineer, Finance Team

Common questions

What finance leaders ask before they see a demo.

How does Cube connect to an existing data warehouse?

Cube connects directly to your data warehouse as a governed source layer. For this operator, the data engineering team completed the connection in roughly two weeks. Since then, the pipeline has been self-sustaining — two support tickets in the entire deployment. The warehouse stays in place. Finance builds on top of it.

How long does implementation take for a multi-location operator?

This team had ad hoc reports running the same weekend they connected their data. The full annual budget went live November 1 — roughly three months after starting in August. All of it was driven by a single internal data engineer. No consultants, no professional services, no drawn-out rollout.

Does Cube require consultants to implement?

No. This operator implemented Cube entirely with their own team. The data engineer watched Cube's video library the first weekend and had everything needed to build the full model. Finance owned the process from day one — no outside dependencies, no consultant handoffs.

Can Cube distribute P&Ls across 180-plus locations with role-based access?

Yes. Cube's row-level security maps each user to their data dimension — each store manager sees only their store. SSO with multi-factor authentication is enforced. Rolling out a new month's P&Ls takes two field changes and a republish. Adding a new location is additive, not structural.

What happens to the Excel workflows our team already has?

Excel stays. Cube's patented bi-directional sync means finance professionals who live in spreadsheets keep working there, with a governed, structured data layer underneath. For this operator — a deeply Excel-centric organization — that was the deciding factor. The executive team, longtime Excel power users, adopted Cube immediately and were requesting custom views within the first weeks.

Learn how Cube is the
Finance Layer for AI.

Plan faster. Report smarter. Lead with confidence.

Get a demo