Every category where a model named Excel for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Corporate tax provision	Tax and compliance	0%	98 of 98	86%	7	under 10 labels · led by Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE Tax Provision at 26%
Fixed asset accounting	Accounting and close	0%	93 of 94	100%	4	under 10 labels · led by Sage Fixed Assets at 29%
FP&A platforms	Planning and analysis	0%	25 of 52	0%	2	under 10 labels · led by Vena at 15%
Revenue recognition	Accounting and close	0%	76 of 77	100%	2	under 10 labels · led by Maxio at 15%
Financial close management	Accounting and close	0%	21 of 68	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by FloQast at 60%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Excel yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Excel across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	2	1	3
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	2	2
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	1	1
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0	0
Mistral Small	1	0	0	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	2	2
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	0	2	3
Kimi K2	0	0	1	1
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0	0
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	3	3

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct2 labels1

Paraphrase4 labelsNone

Comparative0 labelsNone

Budget-constrained8 labels2

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative35 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative49 labels in all, every segment counted; 3 of the 3 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Excel or Google Sheets can be a good starting point before moving to a more specialized tool” Mistral Small · FP&A platforms · budget prompt · alternative

“Use Excel/Smartsheet if your budget is extremely tight and your close process is simple.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Financial close manageme · budget prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Many companies rely upon Excel for calculating their provision for income taxes, but many limitations exist when trying to use Excel to accurately calculate income taxes under ASC 740.” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Corporate tax provision · negative prompt · hard negative

“Excel-only / manual provision processes: Bloomberg Tax warns that manual methods and spreadsheet-heavy processes create key-person dependency” Perplexity Sonar · Corporate tax provision · negative prompt · hard negative

“Spreadsheets (Excel, Google Sheets, etc.) | Prone to formula errors, no built-in audit trail, hard to reconcile, poor compliance” MiniMax M2.5 · Fixed asset accounting · negative prompt · hard negative

“Standalone Spreadsheets (Excel) ... spreadsheets are widely considered the highest risk for revenue recognition errors.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Revenue recognition · negative prompt · hard negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Excel, over the 49 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Excel was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Google Sheets23 of 490Not in the top three

Xero11 of 491Not in the top three

Bloomberg Tax Provision8 of 491Not in the top three

QuickBooks Online8 of 491Not in the top three

Clockwork6 of 495Not in the top three

Thomson Reuters ONESOURCE6 of 490Not in the top three

CSC Corptax5 of 491Not in the top three

Maxio4 of 492Not in the top three

BlackLine4 of 491Not in the top three

QuickBooks4 of 491Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Excel. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 40 of the 49 answers that named Excel and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

worldmetrics.org15

pro.bloombergtax.com11

tax.thomsonreuters.com11

gitnux.org8

learn.g2.com8

softwareadvice.com8

wifitalents.com8

capterra.com7

cbh.com7

g2.com7

Ninety of the ninety domain citations in answers naming Excel came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

tax.thomsonreuters.com/blog/corporate-tax-provision-software9

tax.thomsonreuters.com/blog/tax-software-red-flags-and-what-to-do-about-them7

assetcues.com/blog/fixed-asset-tracking-software6

cbh.com/insights/articles/tax-provision-automation-guide-benefits-software-roadmap6

clockwork.ai/blog/best-fpa-software-small-business6

pro.bloombergtax.com/insights/tax-solutions/buyers-guide-how-to-find-the-right-tax-provisi6

drivetrain.ai/solutions/financial-planning-analysis-software5

golimelight.com/blog/fpa-software-for-small-business5

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Excel

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Excel; a claim can dispute any of them.

Excel/Smartsheet 1

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Excel's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Excel, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at excel.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.