Software5 min read
Signs your business has outgrown spreadsheets
Six specific symptoms that a spreadsheet has become a liability, and the cheaper fixes worth trying before you commission software.
Spreadsheets are excellent, and most businesses should use more of them rather than fewer. The problem is not the spreadsheet. It is the point at which a spreadsheet stops being a tool and becomes infrastructure that nobody maintains and everybody depends on.
The symptoms
- Two people have the file and you do not know whose version is current. This one is fatal and it is the most common.
- Someone has to be asked before anything can be quoted, because the rules are in their head and not in the sheet.
- The same information gets typed into two places - the sheet and WhatsApp, or the sheet and a book.
- You cannot answer a simple question - what did we sell last month, what is actually in stock - without an afternoon of work.
- Only one person can edit it safely, and everything stops when they are away.
- It has grown formulas nobody remembers writing and everybody is afraid to touch.
Try the cheap fixes first
Software is the expensive answer and it is not always the right one. Before commissioning anything, the following genuinely fix a lot of businesses:
- 01Move the file to shared cloud storage so there is exactly one copy. This alone solves the worst symptom.
- 02Lock the formula cells so the sheet cannot be broken by ordinary use.
- 03Write the rules down - how a quote is calculated, what the discounts are - somewhere other than one person's memory.
- 04Buy the off-the-shelf package if a standard one fits your trade.
When it is genuinely time to build
When the process that is hard to systemise is the thing that makes you money. A parts importer whose value is knowing what fits what, a fabricator whose quoting reflects twenty years of judgement, a garage whose scheduling has to account for parts lead times - those do not fit a generic package, and the workaround is costing more every year than the build would.
The honest test is arithmetic. Add up the hours lost to double entry, the jobs quoted wrong, and the work that stops when one person is away. If that number is bigger than the cost of building, build. If it is not, keep the spreadsheet and fix the sharing.