A spreadsheet should become software when a few people edit it every day, when it holds customer or money records that have to be right, when different people need different views of it, or when only one person understands it. A spreadsheet should stay a spreadsheet when one person uses it to think, work things out or plan, and a mistake would be easy to spot and cheap to fix.
The warning signs
A spreadsheet has turned into a system when:
- A few people edit it at the same time, and someone's already written over someone else's work.
- There's a "do not touch" tab, or colour codes only one person understands.
- It decides what happens next, like who to call, what to invoice and what to deliver.
- Data gets copied in from other tools by hand, every day or every week.
- Clients or partners need to see part of it, so you export it and send them a copy.
- It's broken before, and nobody noticed for a while.
If three or more of these sound like yours, it's worth looking at software.
5 spreadsheets that should be software
1. The sales pipeline spreadsheet
Leads, stages, owners, next steps. It decides who gets called and when, a few people update it, and a missed row is a lost client. That's exactly what a CRM is for. See CRM setup and migration.
2. The client onboarding tracker
Who's signed, paid, sent documents and had their kick-off call. A lot of times the client has to be chased for every single item. A portal lets clients do it themselves and shows you who's stuck. See client portals.
3. The job or project tracker shared with clients
If you're exporting it or screenshotting it to send updates, clients should just be able to see their own part directly, and only their own part.
4. The weekly numbers sheet
Figures copied every Monday from the CRM, ads, payments and project tools. By Tuesday it's already out of date. A dashboard that pulls from the real sources gets rid of the copying and the mistakes. See dashboards and reporting.
5. The staff scheduling or allocation sheet
Who's working on what, and when. Once it's dealing with a few people's availability, clashes and client deadlines, it needs rules a spreadsheet can't stick to. That's an internal tool.
5 spreadsheets that are fine as they are
1. Financial models and forecasts
One person building out scenarios to think through a decision. Spreadsheets are the best tool ever made for this.
2. One-off analysis
Pulling data together to answer a question once. If you end up doing the same analysis every week, that's when it should be a dashboard.
3. Personal planning
Your own to-do lists, content ideas, reading lists. Nothing much rides on it and only you use it.
4. Early-stage processes that are still changing
If you're still working out how a process should run, a spreadsheet is the right place to try things. Build software once the process has settled down.
5. Simple reference lists
Supplier contacts, equipment lists, a price list only you keep up to date. It hardly gets edited, it's easy to check, and nothing depends on it in real time.
The middle step
Before building software, try connecting the spreadsheet to the tools around it so data stops being copied by hand. Sometimes that's enough. When it isn't, because the actual issue is permissions, different views for different people or the thing breaking, that's when software pays for itself.
Before you replace one
Write down what the spreadsheet actually does. Every tab, what each column means, who uses it and what decisions it drives. That list ends up being most of the brief for the software, and a lot of times it shows up columns nobody's touched in a year. Our guide on how to write a brief for a software build goes through the rest.
