CRE Daily
Independent Review Coverage
See how CRE Daily reviewed Solsten's workflow, positioning, and fit for underwriting teams. This is a useful first stop for prospects who want an external take before starting a trial.
Excel Alternative
Excel vs CRE Underwriting Software: What Scales Better
Underwrite deals with a structured engine — recoveries, DCF, waterfall, risk scoring — that imports your existing Excel data and never breaks a formula.
Free to start. Paid plans from $99/mo. Per-user, not per-asset.
✓ No credit card ✓ Imports rent rolls + T-12 from .xlsx ✓ Built by a CRE acquisitions analyst
Import your existing rent rolls and expense budgets directly from Excel. No rebuilding from scratch.
Proof
External Validation for Teams Leaving Excel
When spreadsheet-heavy teams evaluate a switch, independent review coverage and user feedback reduce hesitation.
G2
User Reviews and Buyer Validation
Browse early user feedback on G2 to see how real users describe Solsten in their own words. We link to the full review profile rather than over-curating individual quotes.
Why Spreadsheets Break CRE Underwriting
Formulas Break Silently
Insert a row, delete a column, copy a sheet — and formulas break without warning. One misplaced cell reference can throw off your entire underwriting by millions.
No Audit Trail
Who changed the cap rate last Tuesday? Which version has the right rent roll? Excel doesn't track changes, so you're left emailing "v3_FINAL_FINAL.xlsx" back and forth.
Rebuilt, Never Re-Checked
Every new property means copying an old model and hoping nothing broke. AI can now draft that model faster than you can, but it hands back a workbook nobody has checked — and recovery structures, step increases and waterfalls are exactly where the drift hides.
Can't Scale Past 1 Person
Two people editing the same Excel file means merge conflicts, overwrites, and lost work. There's no real-time collaboration, permissions, or investor-level access control.
What Changed When AI Got Good at Spreadsheets
Plenty of underwriters now build their models with an LLM sitting next to them, and it works. A capable analyst can stand up multifamily, retail and industrial templates in a couple of weeks, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. But the speed arrived without the checking, and three problems got harder rather than easier.
Production Scaled. Verification Didn't.
In software you can assert that a given input must produce a given output, then rerun that check on every change, so a regression announces itself. A spreadsheet has no equivalent. You can tie a model out to a second one once, and after that you are trusting that nothing moved when someone dragged a fill down, and that nobody cleared a formula twelve tabs deep that gets found fourteen months later. AI raises how much model you can produce without raising how much of it you can verify.
Portfolios Are an Operations Problem
One deal in one workbook is manageable. Ten assets means ten files that all have to stay in sync, debt sitting above the property level, a promote structure on top, and one asset selling mid-hold while the other nine keep running. Model-building speed does not touch this, because the hard part is keeping separate files agreeing with each other over a five-year hold, not writing any one of them.
Waterfalls Are Circular by Construction
The promote depends on LP IRR, which depends on distributions, which depend on the promote. Add multi-tier hurdles, a GP catch-up, cumulative versus simple pref, and capital calls that reset the clock. A spreadsheet resolves that with iterative calculation and a great deal of hope. And a waterfall error pays an investor the wrong amount, which is a legal problem rather than an embarrassing one.
You already know this from the buy side
A seller sends you their Excel model on a deal you are looking at. Do you underwrite off their file, or do you pull the rent roll and run it through your own model because you cannot trust their work? Almost everyone does the second one. A spreadsheet gets checked as well as its author checks it, and the author is the one person least likely to catch their own errors. That is what the incumbents actually sell, and it is not the math. It is that the lender or appraiser on the other end does not have to audit the file before trusting the output. The review step is the part nobody budgets: check rows, control totals, a reconciliation tab. Most models that change hands have none of them.
What Solsten Does That Spreadsheets Can't
📊
Full Proforma Engine
Annual and monthly operating statements generated automatically from your inputs. No formulas to build, no references to maintain. IRR, NPV, cap rates, and NOI — computed instantly.
🔄
Recovery Modeling Built In
NNN, Base Year Stop, and Modified Gross recovery structures are first-class features — not custom formula hacks. Recoveries auto-link to operating expenses and update when expenses change.
🤖
ML-Powered Forecasting
Solsten learns from your actual payment history. Expense forecasts blend observed growth rates with your assumptions — getting smarter with every data point.
🧠
Saga AI Assistant
Ask "Why did NOI drop in year 3?" and get an answer grounded in your actual property model. Saga explains assumptions, timelines, and outputs — no more reverse-engineering your own spreadsheet.
⏰
Time-Passage Intelligence
Open a property you modeled 6 months ago and everything is current. Leases expire, vacancies extend, market rates inflate — automatically. Your spreadsheet just shows stale numbers.
👥
Team & Investor Access
Share properties with teammates. Give LPs a private dashboard showing their equity slice. Control who sees financing, investment terms, or audit logs — per property, per person.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
An honest look at both approaches.
| Feature | Solsten | Excel |
|---|---|---|
| Annual Proforma Engine | ✅ | — |
| Monthly Proforma Engine | ✅ | — |
| Rent Roll Timeline with Projections | ✅ | — |
| NNN / Base Year Stop / Mod Gross Recoveries | ✅ | — |
| GP/LP Waterfall Modeling | ✅ | — |
| Multi-Loan Debt Service & Amortization | ✅ | — |
| Exit Scenario Analysis (Every Exit Year) | ✅ | — |
| ML-Powered Expense Forecasting | ✅ | — |
| AI Assistant Grounded in Your Property Data | ✅ | — |
| Automatic Time-Passage Intelligence | ✅ | — |
| Tenant Lifecycle Tracking & Projections | ✅ | — |
| 15-Factor Risk Scoring | ✅ | — |
| Built-In Audit Trail | ✅ | — |
| Cloud-Based Team Collaboration | ✅ | — |
| Organization & Investor Access Controls | ✅ | — |
| Portfolio Aggregation & LP Dashboards | ✅ | — |
| Vacancy Auto-Extension & Market Snapshots | ✅ | — |
| Inflation Engine (Day-Level Compound) | ✅ | — |
| Basic Financial Calculations (NPV, IRR) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Completely Free to Start | ✅ | ✅ |
| Total Formula Flexibility | — | ✅ |
| Universal Availability (Every Computer) | — | ✅ |
| No Learning Curve | — | ✅ |
| Starting Price | Free | $0–$160/yr |
Where Spreadsheets Still Win
We believe in transparency. Spreadsheets have real advantages:
- • Total flexibility — You can model literally anything. Custom waterfalls, unique deal structures, one-off scenarios that no software anticipates.
- • Universal availability — Every computer has Excel or Google Sheets. No accounts to create, no logins to remember.
- • No learning curve — If you already know Excel, you can start immediately. No new interface to learn.
- • No vendor lock-in — Your data lives in files you control. No subscription to cancel, no data migration to worry about.
For quick back-of-napkin calculations or truly unique deal structures, spreadsheets are hard to beat. But for the 95% of underwriting that every CRE deal requires — proformas, recoveries, tenant timelines, waterfalls, risk scoring — Solsten eliminates the formula risk and gives you institutional-grade output in minutes.
Easy Migration
Bring Your Existing Data — Don't Start Over
Already have rent rolls and expense budgets in Excel? Import them directly. No reformatting, no manual re-entry.
1
Export Your Data
Save your existing rent roll or expense budget as .xlsx from Excel or Google Sheets.
2
Upload to Solsten
Click "Import from Excel" on the Tenants or Expenses page. Our wizard auto-detects your columns — suite numbers, tenant names, dates, and amounts.
3
Review & Refine
Preview the mapped data, apply bulk defaults for recovery type and step increases, and fix any edge cases before importing.
4
Full Analysis — Instantly
Your data flows into the proforma engine. Get a complete operating statement, IRR, NOI, risk scores, and tenant timeline — in seconds.
Excel Columns We Auto-Detect
✅ Suite / Space / Unit Number ✅ Tenant Name ✅ Leased Area / Rentable SF ✅ Lease Start / Commencement Date ✅ Lease Expiration Date ✅ Base Rent / Rent PSF ✅ Annual Escalation / Step Increase ✅ Renewal Probability ✅ Expense Name / Category ✅ Annual Amount / Budget ✅ Expense Type (Operating / Capital) ✅ Payment Frequency ✅ Fixed % / Variable Split ✅ Recoverable % ✅ Recovery Type (NNN / BYS / MG)
The Real Cost of "Free"
Excel is free. The mistakes it lets you make aren't.
⚠️ Formula Errors
When Dartmouth researchers audited 50 real operational spreadsheets, only seven were free of errors that produced wrong results — an 86% error rate. In CRE, a broken SUM or mislinked reference can overstate NOI by hundreds of thousands, and nothing in the file tells you.
⚠️ The Review Nobody Budgets
Building the model was never the expensive part, and AI made it cheaper still. Checking it is the cost that did not move — every assumption traced, every recovery structure tied out, every formula confirmed to still point where it did last quarter. Solsten does that verification once, in the engine, instead of once per deal, per analyst, forever.
⚠️ Lost Institutional Credibility
Sending an Excel model to a lender or LP? They know the formulas might be wrong. A purpose-built platform with deterministic calculations and clean reporting signals professionalism.
Choose Your Migration Path from Excel
Keep your speed, lose spreadsheet risk, and start with the path that fits your current process.
Deal-by-Deal Underwriters
Import your next deal and compare outputs against your current workbook before switching fully.
Start with one live deal → Start with Excel import path →Teams Replacing ARGUS + Excel
Use one cloud workflow for structured inputs, proforma outputs, and collaboration.
See ARGUS replacement path →Sponsor/Broker Presentations
Turn analyst worksheets into investor-ready reporting and scenario views.
Book a workflow walkthrough →Spreadsheet vs. Solsten FAQ
Common questions from Excel power users.
Why should I stop underwriting CRE deals in Excel?
Excel has no built-in audit trail, formulas break silently when rows are inserted or deleted, version control requires manual file naming, and complex structures like NNN recoveries and GP/LP waterfalls must be rebuilt from scratch every time. Purpose-built tools eliminate these risks.
Can I import my existing Excel models into Solsten?
Yes. Solsten has a guided Excel import wizard that auto-detects common column formats for rent rolls and expense budgets. Upload your .xlsx file and Solsten maps tenants, suites, lease dates, rent rates, and expense line items automatically.
Is Solsten as flexible as a spreadsheet?
Solsten handles the 95% of CRE analysis that every deal requires — proformas, recoveries, waterfalls, tenant timelines, risk scoring — without custom formulas. For truly unique one-off calculations, you can always use a spreadsheet alongside Solsten. Many users keep both: Solsten for the core model, Excel for side analysis.
Does Solsten have an AI assistant?
Yes. Saga, Solsten's AI assistant, is grounded in your actual property model data. Ask questions about your assumptions, get explanations of your outputs, and review scenarios — all without leaving the platform.
Can I keep Excel and still use Solsten?
Yes. Many teams use Solsten as the core underwriting engine and keep Excel for ad-hoc side analysis. Solsten handles proformas, recoveries, timelines, and reporting while Excel remains optional for one-off custom work.
Your Next Deal Deserves Better Than a Spreadsheet
Import your existing Excel data. Get a full proforma, risk scores, tenant timeline, and Saga AI assistant — in minutes, not hours.