Maintaining consistency across financial models in Excel

[mcliu]

For those of you that do a lot of financial modelling in Excel, is there a way to make sure certain fields don't change?

For example, I maintain financial models for~20 companies, the format is pretty standardized and a lot of the metrics & calculations are the same, but the financials & projections are different. I'm finding that sometimes when I make edits, update the model for a new year, change projections, things sometimes get wonky and I need to check all the cells again.

Is there a way to lock these? Is there a software for financial modelling that keeps track of assumptions & changes over time & allows for multiple cases?

[Spekulatius]

You use "format cells" -  to protect and lock the cells with the formulas etc..

 

Then yon need to protect the worksheet to actually protect the locked cells in that worksheet.

 

 

I personally found it useful separate or color code "input" cells from calculation and output cells. You can lock everything but the input cells to keep a worksheet intact.