What you fill in and tick stays in this browser window only. We do not store or send anything. It is gone when you close the page, so print your result.
For owners and operations people whose company runs on Excel, email and the phone. It takes 20 minutes to fill in. At the end you will know whether you need a system or just a tidier spreadsheet.
Since 2023 we have delivered 15+ production projects. Most of them started with an Excel file that someone "had in their head".
1. Five signs Excel is no longer enough
Tick what applies to you.
| How many you ticked | What it means |
|---|---|
| 0 | Leave Excel alone. A new system would save you nothing. |
| 1 | Tidy the structure using part 3. Come back in six months. |
| 2 or more | It's worth looking for something else. Continue with part 2. |
2. What Excel costs you: a worksheet
Without a number, the decision about a system is a gut feeling. Fill in the table for one normal week. An estimate is enough; precision isn't the goal.
| Manual work | How many people | Hours a week per person | Total hours a week |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copying data from emails and PDFs into the spreadsheet | 0 | ||
| Searching for information in files and emails | 0 | ||
| Checking and fixing errors in the spreadsheet | 0 | ||
| Calls like "where is it, who has it" | 0 | ||
| Putting together a report or overview for management | 0 | ||
| Total | 0 |
Hours a month (× 4): 0
Multiply the result by four. That's the hours a month you pay today for work that software should do.
Then ask one question: where would the saved time go? An hour saved in sales can become an order. An hour saved in admin often just dissolves. Start where the time has somewhere to go.
Also write down the last mistake that cost money. One wrong quote often weighs more than the hours.
3. A spreadsheet structure that lasts
These rules always help. If you ever move to a system, the move will be much easier.
- One row is one thing. One order, one customer, one item.
- One sheet is one kind of thing. Customers separately, orders separately.
- Every row has its own ID. An order points to the customer by ID, not by name.
- Status is a column, not a colour. "quoted", "confirmed", "done".
- Who handles it is a column too. Not a note in a cell.
- History isn't written by overwriting. A change is a new row with a date and a name.
- No merged cells and no empty rows as separators.
Three patterns you can copy
| Process | Sheets and columns | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Orders | Customers (ID, Name, Company ID, Contact) · Orders (ID, Customer ID, Date, Status, Owner, Amount) | Status only from a list. The amount is never overwritten; a change is a new row. |
| Customers (CRM) | Companies (Company ID, Name, City, Account owner, Status) · Contacts (Company ID, Name, Role, Phone, Email) · Activities (Date, Company ID, Who, What happened, Next step, Due date) | The company ID is the key, not the name. Activities are only ever added. |
| Inventory | Items (Code, Name, Unit, Minimum, Stock, Reorder) · Movements (Date, Code, Type, Quantity, Document, Who) | Nobody types the stock level; it's calculated from movements. A stock count is a new movement with the difference. |
Stock formula: =SUMIFS(Movements[Quantity],Movements[Code],[@Code]). Receipts positive, issues negative.
A tidy-up in one afternoon
A word on sharing: co-authoring in Microsoft 365 doesn't give you per-person permissions or input control. Pasting from the clipboard even gets around Data Validation.
4. What instead of Excel
Not always a custom system. You have three options.
| Situation | What to choose |
|---|---|
| A few people, one list, mistakes are cheap | Stay in Excel and tidy the structure |
| A standard process that works the same everywhere (invoicing, attendance) | Off-the-shelf SaaS, if you can get your data out |
| A process that sets you apart, or SaaS can't do the one thing you need | Your own system, one process at a time |
Five questions before you sign up for SaaS
5. Moving without chaos: four rules
- Don't start with a big migration. At one client, the new system was half empty for the first weeks. One rule helped: on every call with a partner, whoever takes the call adds or updates them in the system. Attach the system to work people already do every day.
- Leave a way back. An export to Excel calms even the biggest sceptic.
- One process at a time. In our own accounting we replaced only invoice processing. One invoice took 10 to 15 minutes; today it takes under a minute. 70 % go through without a human.
- Export safely. Excel can run text that starts with "=" as a formula. Ask your vendor about it.
6. What to prepare before the first conversation
You don't need a specification. Three things are enough:
- the documents or quotes you send today, PDFs are fine,
- the Excel file the process lives in, even if it's messy,
- this completed checklist and the worksheet from part 2.