TV and movie stars reenact real accounting struggles

Actors and actresses from shows like “The Sopranos,” “Baywatch,” “The West Wing,” “Scandal,” “Charles in Charge,” and the movie “Clueless" have been hired by software company DataRails to narrate examples of real-life problems with financial planning and analysis in a new video.

The YouTube video features Joseph Gannascoli from “The Sopranos,” Nicole Eggert from “Baywatch”and “Charles in Charge,” Joshua Malina from “The West Wing” and “Scandal,” and Stacey Dash from "Clueless." In the video, the performers speak the exact words from real recorded calls of FP&A professionals to DataRails.

“Listen, a lot of our sales are just linked to another Excel linked to an Excel,” says Gannascoli from behind the wheel of his car. “So, it’s just a lot of one spreadsheet going to another spreadsheet, and then refreshing that one. And if something changes, you have to refresh all the spreadsheets again!”

DataRails via YouTube

In another clip, Eggert recreates a call from a CFO and controller of a 600-person US construction equipment supplier. “So we have a very slow end of month and quarter, and we use a lot of Excel,” she says. “We want to take away some of these problems where one little change to one of our spreadsheets leads to hours of trying to figure out what happened.”

Several accountants and financial analysts reacted to the videos on Twitter. “Outdated Excel worksheets are funny, painful and tragic indeed!” said Charles Botha, chartered accountant and financial controller.

“I think we can all relate to these problems,” said Joseph Carvajales, senior financial analyst at Trust Investment.

“I think it is something we can all relate to when using spreadsheets,” said Paul Barnurst, director of finance, sales, operations and analytics at DigiCert. “In particular, I laughed at the linking to multiple spreadsheets. It is like the super long nested if statement it takes forever to get to the bottom of it.”

The video comes after DataRails released a report last week from a pair of professors at the University of Baltimore that estimated dysfunctional and error-prone manual financial reporting processes will cost U.S. businesses $7.8 billion in 2022 (see story).

DataRails isn’t the only accounting software company to hire recognizable TV stars lately. FloQast has set up a video venture called FloQast Studios to produce original video content. Last week, it posted the first and second episodes of its new sitcom video series “PBC,” which features recognizable actors like Danny Trejo from “Machete” and Kate Flannery and Creed Bratton from “The Office” showing what it’s like to work as an accountant at a tech startup. The creators of the show, FloQast CEO Mike Whitmire and Drew Carrick of FloQast Studios, talked to Accounting Today in a new podcast about the show and their future plans (read more about it here).