Is your NAV review still in Excel? The numbers, the risks and what to do instead.
Most net asset value (NAV) reviews still run in spreadsheets. The surveys that exist say automation of NAV production is rare. Regulators expect every large movement investigated, evidenced and signed by someone senior, and a workbook meets that bar only with hours of manual effort. Here are the numbers, the real cost of a NAV review in Excel, and the three ways out.
In short
- Only 19% of industry teams were automating areas such as NAV production in 2025, against the 38% who said in 2022 that they wanted to (Alpha FMC Global Operations Survey, reported by BBH in June 2026).
- Automated, the checks take seconds: on our demo book, 371 checks across 6 funds run in under 3 seconds, measured.
- A spreadsheet NAV review is a seven-step manual process, and the evidence it leaves behind is a set of initials in a cell.
- Guernsey's pricing controls guidance asks for limits on key elements, movements investigated, and the outcome signed by a suitably senior member of staff.
- The three ways out are to harden the workbook, to buy an enterprise platform, or to run a tool sized for the desk. Only the last two remove the manual steps.
What is a NAV review?
A NAV review is the set of checks a fund administrator runs on a fund's net asset value before it is released to investors. The reviewer does not recalculate the NAV. They test the one calculation against its sources: cash against the bank, positions against the custodian, prices against the feed, FX rates, fee and income accruals, subscriptions and redemptions against the register, and the movement in the NAV itself against a tolerance. A tolerance is the size of difference the firm has agreed to accept, and a break is a difference bigger than that.
A NAV reconciliation is the comparing part of that review: this figure against that source. A shadow NAV is something else, a full second calculation of the NAV by another party. Most administrators do not run a shadow NAV. They run a review, and in most firms the review lives in a workbook that is rolled forward every morning. What is NAV reconciliation describes the process, a worked example, and where breaks come from.
How many NAV reviews still run in spreadsheets?
More than half is the honest reading of the surveys, and nobody has counted fund administrators directly. In 2022, 38% of industry teams told Alpha FMC's Global Operations Survey that they wanted to automate areas such as NAV production. The 2025 wave of the same survey found only 19% were doing so, a gap BBH reported in June 2026.
Earlier data points the same way. Milestone Group's Outsourcing and Oversight Report 2019 found that over 50% of the asset managers it surveyed still used manual spreadsheets as part of their oversight, as A-Team Insight reported in January 2020.
Both surveys counted asset managers and the teams that oversee their administrators, not the administrators themselves. Our view is that the administrator side is higher, because at an administrator the workbook is not a check on the review. It is the review.
How does a NAV review run in Excel?
A NAV review in Excel runs the same seven steps every dealing day, for every fund.
- Collect the source files: the custodian's cash and holdings, broker confirms, the price file, the FX file, the register. Some sit behind a two-factor login. One arrives as a PDF.
- Roll the workbook forward: copy yesterday's file, rename it, change the date.
- Paste each file into its tab, then repair whatever the paste broke.
- Re-key the figures that arrived as a PDF.
- Compare. The formulas flag the differences against tolerances someone set years ago.
- Investigate the breaks, in the order they appear on the sheet, not in order of size.
- Initial the cell. Save. Email the pack.
The review logic inside those workbooks is usually sound, with years of daily use behind it. The problem was never the checks. It is the six steps around them.
What does a spreadsheet NAV review cost?
A spreadsheet NAV review costs three things that never appear on an invoice: senior hours, key-person risk and missing evidence.
Hours. On one desk we studied closely, our own estimate was around ten senior hours a day across its funds. Roughly nine of those went on collection, logins, re-keying, roll-forwards and comparing numbers that already agreed. About one hour was judgement: the breaks, and the sign-off. That is one desk, our own count, not a survey.
Key-person risk. The formulas live in the head of whoever built the sheet. When that person is on leave, the review slows. When they leave, it breaks.
Evidence. A set of initials in a cell proves that someone was there. It does not show what was compared, to what, at which tolerance, or why the break was accepted. That is the question an auditor asks, and the workbook cannot answer it.
Why do spreadsheet reviews persist?
Because they work, until the day they do not. The logic is trusted, the sheet was built by the person who still runs it, and nobody gets budget to replace something that has not visibly failed.
The other reason is price. For years the tools that automated this were built and priced for administrators with hundreds of funds, and an implementation was a project. A firm with five, twenty or fifty funds was left with the spreadsheet, so the spreadsheet became the standard.
What do regulators and auditors expect of NAV controls?
Documented controls, investigated movements, and evidence that a senior person looked. Guernsey's regulator wrote it down in November 2021 in its guidance on pricing controls, and its definition of Manager starts with "the designated administrator", so it is written for the administrator's desk. The note sits under Rule 3.11(1) of the Authorised Collective Investment Schemes (Class B) Rules and Guidance, 2021, which requires the manager and trustee to have appropriate controls, procedures and checks in place for the pricing of units; the guidance under that rule points them to this note for what those are. Paragraph 2.11 says:
Managers should set a limit for certain key elements of a valuation such that any movement beyond that limit is investigated and the investigation and evidence of the outcome should be evidenced by the signature of a suitably senior member of staff. Such key elements include: share/unit price; stock prices; exchange rates; income accruals and expenses, and tax.
The same note asks for unchanged prices to be investigated in case a movement was overlooked (2.11), cash reconciled at the bank regularly (2.12), units in issue reconciled to the register at least monthly (2.13), and a cut-off procedure to guard against omissions or duplications (2.5). Read as a list, that is a NAV review.
In Luxembourg, CSSF Circular 24/856 has applied since 1 January 2025 and sets out how NAV calculation errors are to be classed, documented and reported. The thresholds by fund type are a post of their own.
An auditor testing the control asks five things: what was compared, to what, at which tolerance, by whom, and when. Initials in a cell answer one of the five.
What are the alternatives to Excel for a NAV review?
There are three alternatives to Excel for a NAV review, and they differ on the manual steps, not on the checks.
| Each morning | Spreadsheet | Enterprise platform | A tool sized for the desk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Collecting the files | By hand, per source | Connectors, built per client | Dropped in, or set up per source at onboarding |
| Re-keying PDFs | By hand | Depends on the connector | Read by the tool, one reader per PDF format |
| Tolerances | Whatever the sheet carries | Configured per fund | The firm's own, per fund |
| What the reviewer sees | Every row | Exceptions | Only the breaks, ranked by impact on the NAV |
| Evidence per figure | Initials in a cell | System log | Every figure traced to its source cell |
| Sign-off record | The saved file | Workflow record | Tamper-evident audit trail; the reviewer still signs |
| Time on the checks | Hours | Automated; varies by platform | Seconds, measured |
| Setup | Already there | A project | Weeks, on your own tenant |
The first alternative is to harden the workbook: lock the formulas, log the versions, write the procedure down. It keeps every manual step. The second is an enterprise platform, which removes them at a cost and timescale built for hundreds of funds.
The third is a tool built for a desk of five to fifty funds, which is what NavRecs is. The checks a workbook usually carries are the ones it ships with.
What changes when the review is automated?
Automated, the morning comes back and the evidence is recorded as the work is done. The files are dropped in, or collected per source once that is set up at onboarding. Every check re-performs at once with the firm's own tolerances: on our demo book, 371 checks across 6 funds run in under 3 seconds, measured. The reviewer sees only the breaks, ranked by their impact on the NAV, and every figure is one click from the cell it came from.
The sign-off lands on an append-only, tamper-evident audit trail, so what was compared, at which tolerance, by whom and when is answered before the auditor asks. The judgement stays human: the reviewer still signs. The checks are the ones you need, 18 shipped, switched on or off per fund, and new ones built on request. It all runs inside your own Microsoft tenant, nothing leaves it, and there is no generative AI in the numbers. For the business case to automate the NAV review, read why automate the NAV review.
Book a 20-minute demo. Your own morning, run on sample data. For a screen-by-screen walkthrough of the overview, controls, breaks and audit trail, read what automated NAV reconciliation looks like.
Frequently asked questions
Is it acceptable to run a NAV review in Excel?
Yes, if the checks, tolerances, investigations and sign-offs are documented and evidenced. Most of the cost of a spreadsheet review is in producing that evidence by hand, every day.
What is the difference between a NAV review and NAV reconciliation?
In practice they are the same morning. Reconciliation is the comparing of each figure to its source. The review is the whole job, including the judgement on the breaks and the signature.
Does a fund administrator need a shadow NAV to review a NAV?
No. A shadow NAV is a full second calculation, usually run by or for the manager. A review tests the one calculation against its sources, which is the administrator's job and needs no second NAV.
How long should a NAV review take?
Run by hand, hours per desk. Automated, the checks take seconds and the time that remains is the judgement on the breaks, which is the part worth a senior person's morning.
What should a spreadsheet NAV review keep as evidence?
For each check: the source file, the figure, what it was compared to, the tolerance, who investigated any break, when, the outcome and the signature. If the workbook cannot show all eight, the control is not evidenced.
See the checks NavRecs runs every morning → The checks
How it stays inside your own tenant → Security