The End of the Spreadsheet Premium for Family Offices

Partner content by Dean Palmiter, Founder and CEO of Asseta.

For decades, spreadsheets have played a central role in the operations of family offices. They offered flexibility at a time when wealth structures were simpler and purpose-built technology barely existed. 

For single-family offices managing a limited number of entities, accounts, and asset classes, spreadsheets provided a workable solution. They allowed teams to customize reporting, move quickly, and retain a sense of direct control over financial information.

As private wealth expanded, this flexibility became institutionalized. Spreadsheets were no longer a temporary solution but a foundational tool, embedded across accounting, reporting, and investment tracking. 

This created what many family offices came to view as a “spreadsheet premium,” or the belief that manual systems delivered adaptability and oversight that software could not.

At the same time, the scale and shape of wealth were changing far faster than the systems supporting it. 

Family offices have evolved into complex operating environments, often overseeing dozens of legal entities, multiple investment vehicles, global banking relationships, and a growing mix of direct investments and alternatives.

This growth in wealth brought with it a corresponding increase in sophistication. Family offices moved well beyond preservation models into active capital allocation across venture capital, private equity, real assets, and bespoke co investments. Assets managed inside family offices have expanded into the trillions, effectively turning many offices into small investment firms. 

Yet while investment strategies matured, operational infrastructure largely did not.

Most family offices continue to rely on tools that were never designed to support multi entity financial systems. Accounting platforms built for small businesses struggle to handle consolidation, governance, and complex ownership structures. 

Enterprise resource planning systems, on the other hand, are optimized for corporate workflows such as inventory management and procurement, not interwoven capital structures and private investments. 

Caught between these extremes, family offices filled the gaps with spreadsheets.

What once felt like flexibility now carries a growing cost. Manual processes introduce inconsistency across data sets, create dependencies on a small number of key individuals, and make it increasingly difficult to maintain strong governance and timely insight. 

Deloitte estimates that family offices can spend up to one fifth of their time on administration and compliance alone, a figure that is often higher in North America. This operational burden is not the result of insufficient talent or effort. It is the predictable outcome of systems that no longer match the complexity they are meant to support. 

None of this suggests that spreadsheets no longer have a role. They remain an indispensable tool for accountants and finance teams, particularly for analysis, modeling, and one off scenarios. 

Their familiarity and flexibility ensure they will always have a place in financial work. The issue is not their usefulness but their limitations when elevated from a tool to a system. 

Spreadsheets are inherently static. They are not real time, they operate in silos, and they rely on manual updates that slow as complexity increases. Each new version introduces the risk of inconsistency, and each additional user increases the likelihood of misalignment. 

When spreadsheets become the primary source of record rather than a supplement to governed systems, they constrain visibility and responsiveness at precisely the moment when family offices need speed, accuracy, and shared understanding.

The spreadsheet premium is eroding because the environment that justified it no longer exists. Complexity has compounded faster than infrastructure, and the gap between what family offices do and how they do it has widened. 

Spreadsheets are no longer a source of control, they are a source of friction.

The defining challenge facing family offices today is not scale but complexity. While assets under management have grown significantly, it is the structure of that wealth that has changed most dramatically. 

Modern family offices are sophisticated, but each new strategy, co investment, or family initiative adds another layer to an already intricate system.

This complexity compounds over time: a single direct investment can introduce multiple entities, capital calls, distributions, tax considerations, and reporting requirements. Multiply this across venture portfolios, private equity funds, real assets, and operating businesses, and the result is a financial environment where information is deeply interdependent. 

Spreadsheets struggle not because they are inaccurate by nature, but because they are not designed to model interdependence. Each file becomes a partial representation of the truth, maintained through manual updates and assumptions. 

Traditional accounting systems face their own limitations. Small business platforms lack the consolidation ability, while enterprise systems are optimized for corporate processes. 

The result is a technology no-man's-land, where family offices assemble patchwork solutions that rely heavily on manual effort to bridge gaps between systems. 

This approach can function at low levels of complexity, but it does not scale. Over time, the operational burden grows and infrastructure becomes a constraint.

The ongoing transfer of wealth is not simply moving assets from one generation to the next, it is reshaping expectations around transparency, collaboration, and purpose. 

Next generation principals have grown up with intuitive technology and real time access to information, and are accustomed to systems that integrate seamlessly and provide clear visibility.

For them, spreadsheets do not represent flexibility or control, they represent opacity and unnecessary friction. Manual reporting cycles and fragmented data feel out of step with both the scale of their responsibilities and the pace at which they operate.

For legacy family offices, the generational shift exposes accumulated operational debt. Years of workarounds and manual processes were once tolerated as bespoke but now look inefficient and risky.

The next generation will not inherit broken infrastructure by default, they will replace it. 

Family offices that modernize will be better positioned to support continuity, attract talent, and align operations with evolving family values. And those that don’t, they risk becoming bottlenecks rather than enablers of long term wealth.

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Dean Palmiter is the Founder and CEO of Asseta, the AI-powered platform revolutionizing how family offices manage wealth — replacing spreadsheets with automation, intelligence, and ultra-secure financial visibility.