Most compliance teams still track regulatory coverage in Excel. It's familiar, flexible, and fundamentally wrong for this job. Here's why.
Spreadsheets are great for lists. Regulations aren't lists. They're hierarchical graphs of interconnected obligations with conditions, dependencies, and cascading risk.
Spreadsheets model each rule as one row. But a single rule can contain 5-10 separate obligations, each with different conditions, thresholds, and risk profiles. You can't capture that in a row.
At best, you get a colour-coded RAG status. There's no enforcement calibration, no cascade analysis, no probabilistic scoring. All gaps look equally important.
Someone has to read the regulation, create the spreadsheet, update it when the regulation changes, and re-assess coverage manually. It's always out of date.
Spreadsheets can't model that Rule A depends on Rule B, or that a gap in customer identification cascades to 15 other obligations. You miss the blast radius.
| Rule | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Rule 4.14.6 | Covered | See CID policy |
| Rule 15.3 | Partial | Need to update |
| Rule 8.1 | Gap | TBD |
768 rows. Binary status. No risk scoring. No dependencies. No enforcement context.
146,445 obligations scored. 4-axis risk. Enforcement-calibrated. Dependencies modelled.
| AuditDSS | Spreadsheet | |
|---|---|---|
| Granularity | 146,445 obligations | ~768 rows |
| Time to first assessment | < 5 minutes | Days to weeks |
| Risk scoring | 4-axis probabilistic | RAG (Red/Amber/Green) |
| Dependency modelling | Full graph | Not possible |
| Enforcement calibration | Automatic | Manual research |
| Remediation guidance | AI-generated per gap | Manual |
| Version control | Full history | Manual versions |
| Consistency | 100% | Depends on author |
| Cost | From $199/mo | "Free" + analyst time |
Upload the same document you'd track in Excel. Get a scored, structured gap analysis in under 5 minutes.