When a spreadsheet has become the database
Excel is an excellent tool for calculating and a poor one for keeping records. Once several people maintain the same list, someone overwrites a row nobody misses until it’s gone. The fix is a small application where everyone sees and changes only what they should — and every change carries a name and a date.
How it gets solved
The columns of the list become a data model: what is a record, what is a status, what is a responsibility? Often three worksheets turn out to describe a single workflow.
On top of that comes a web application with filters, views per role and a history for every entry. The existing data is carried over.
Anyone who still wants to analyze in Excel can: an export in the old format stays available at the push of a button.
What drives the effort
- How many people edit the list and with which permissions
- Whether it holds formulas and analyses that are still needed
- How clean the existing data is
Every quote is preceded by a free conversation in which the scope gets cut back as far as it will go.
How billing worksWhen it isn’t worth it
As long as one person maintains the list, others only read it and a mistake has no serious consequences, Excel is the right choice. A shared file in OneDrive with version history already solves most of it.
Common questions
- Can we keep analyzing in Excel?
- Yes. The application produces exports in the familiar format, and anyone attached to their pivot tables keeps them.
- Isn’t that a big IT project?
- Usually not. A list with a handful of columns and states is a manageable application. A first usable version arrives early, and the rest grows from there.
More typical cases
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