When a spreadsheet is still enough

The most widely used business software in Italian small companies isn't called SAP and doesn't cost a monthly fee: it's a spreadsheet, open for years, with columns colour-coded according to a system only its author understands. Software vendors describe it as a problem. Most of the time it isn't.

A spreadsheet has three virtues no business system has: you change it while you use it, you don't have to ask anyone's permission, and the person who built it understands it. If the process changes every couple of months, if there are a few hundred rows, if one person handles it, the spreadsheet isn't a stopgap. It's the right tool, and replacing it with an application means paying to make rigid something that works precisely because it's flexible.

The signs that it isn't enough any more

It isn't the number of rows that decides. It's these, and they usually arrive together.

Two people are emailing versions to each other. «final_2_ok.xlsx» attached to an email is the moment the spreadsheet stopped being a source of truth and became a photograph. From then on somebody is working on old data, and nobody knows who.

Nobody touches the formulas any more. If a column calculates something no one can explain, and everyone avoids changing it for fear of breaking the rest, the spreadsheet has become a program with no tests and no author.

The same data gets retyped somewhere else. The customer exists in the sheet, in the invoicing software and in the inbox. Every copy is a chance for the three versions to drift apart, and the one who finds out is almost always the customer.

There are questions you can't answer. «How many quotes did we send in March, and how many did we close?» If answering means opening three files and adding up by hand, the data exists but isn't usable — which is the same as not having it.

A mistake has already cost you. A duplicate shipment, an item sold that wasn't in stock, a discount given to someone who wasn't entitled to it. One isolated mistake is a mistake. The same mistake three times is a tooling problem.

What to do before buying a business system

The move doesn't have to be from Excel to a complete system. In between there's almost always the cheapest answer: leave the spreadsheet where it is and build only the missing piece.

If the problem is two people working on it together, what you need is one place where the data lives and a form to put it in — not twenty-six screens. If the problem is that data has to be retyped into the accounting software, what you need is a link between the two, not the replacement of both. If the problem is a question you can't answer, sometimes a report that updates itself is enough.

I've seen companies buy a system costing tens of thousands to solve a problem that involved one table and two people, and end up with the same work as before plus a subscription. And I've seen the same amount spent well, where the spreadsheet really was blocking four people every day.

The calculation worth doing

Before changing anything, measure one thing: how many hours a week that spreadsheet costs the people using it — retyping, checking, correcting, meetings to work out which version counts. Multiply by the real hourly cost. If the number is small, the spreadsheet is fine and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. If it's large, you also have the budget: it's already in your P&L, just under a different heading.