Comparison
Controls Star vs spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are flexible tools for organizing and calculating project data — and Controls Star still reads them. What it adds is repeatable project intelligence: automated EVM, S-curves, discipline performance, critical-path insight and AI-generated summaries on top of the same data.
Controls Star
Excel spreadsheet
Time to weekly report
~60 seconds from Excel upload
Hours of manual assembly each cycle
Formula management
Zero — computed server-side
Manual — formulas maintained by whoever owns the file
Trend detection week-over-week
Automated inflection alerts
Manual — done by your team
AI-generated executive summary
Written for you
Written by your team
P6 XER analysis
Reads your XER export — critical paths auto-parsed
Manual re-key from P6
Board-pack export
1-click PPTX + PDF
Assembled manually each cycle
Multi-user access
Web app, role-based access
Single-file workflow (email/shared drive)
Best for
Teams that want the recurring analysis automated
Solo controls engineers who prefer working directly in Excel
Our Take
Keep the spreadsheets you already use as inputs. Controls Star automates the recurring analysis on top of them — so weekly reporting takes minutes instead of hours.