Plenty of companies have a file named something like "Clients_final_edited_3.xlsx". One person knows where it is, three people open it at the same time, and each of them saves their own copy. Excel is an excellent tool for calculation and analysis, and most successful companies started out on it. The trouble starts when it turns into the database for the whole company.
How do I know my company has outgrown Excel?
Go through these situations. If three or more sound familiar, it's time.
- More than one person edits the same file, and the copies on different computers don't match.
- The month-end report takes a day or two of gathering and copying.
- You only notice a late payment or a contract renewal after the date has passed.
- You can't tell who changed a number, or when.
- One employee understands how the formulas work, and everyone is lost when they go on leave.
- You want a client or partner to see part of the data, and you can't hand them the file.
What do you lose by staying on spreadsheets?
The obvious loss is time: hours of copying, pasting and checking. A harder one to measure is late decisions. If you only see overdue sales or contracts close to expiry after pulling them together by hand, the decision comes after the moment to act has gone.
Then there is the risk. A single file on a single computer can be deleted, corrupted or emailed by mistake to an outside address, and all your client data goes with it.
What changes when you move to a system?
Data is entered once, in its proper place, and each person sees it according to their permissions. The monthly report becomes a page you can open at any time. Alerts arrive before the deadline instead of after it. And every change is recorded under the name of whoever made it.
We built a system on this idea for ourselves, to manage our clients, contracts and payment records, because we went through the same stage. We wrote about part of it in organizing client contracts and renewals.
How do you switch without stopping your business?
- Collect the filesEvery spreadsheet the team really uses, and who owns it
- Map the processWho enters what, when, and who needs to see it
- Start with one moduleClients, contracts or sales, one at a time
- Clean and moveStandardize names and dates before the move
- Run in parallelTwo weeks on the system and the file together, then the file closes
The last step matters most. Set a date when the old file becomes read-only. Keeping both methods going for months takes you right back to several versions of the truth.
How should you organize Excel files if you aren't ready to switch yet?
If the system is a year away, a few habits make spreadsheets less risky and make the move easier later. The most important is one table per type of data, with one row per record and one column per piece of information.
- Don't merge cells, and don't put two headings in one column.
- Use dropdown lists for repeated fields, such as city and order status, so the same thing isn't typed in different ways.
- Write dates in one format across all files.
- Lock the columns that contain formulas so nobody edits them.
- Give every client or item a fixed ID number that stays the same even if the name changes.
Keep a weekly backup somewhere separate from the employee's computer. These steps give you a cleaner file and save weeks of cleanup on the day you decide to move to a system. The problem of several people editing the same file, though, stays with you until you move.
Are Google Sheets or Excel online a middle ground?
Yes, for a while. A shared file in the cloud solves the multiple-copies problem, because everyone edits the same file, and it keeps a history of changes you can go back to.
It is still a spreadsheet, though. It won't stop someone entering a wrong number in the wrong place, it won't send an alert before a renewal date, and it can't give each employee access to only some of the rows. Use it as a bridge toward a system, and arrange the data in it the way described above, which shortens the move when it comes. If inventory or staff records are what's straining your spreadsheets, we wrote about an inventory management system in detail.
Who inside the company should lead the move from Excel?
Someone on the team who knows the daily work, backed by management with authority to make small decisions. Often it's the same person who owns the most important file today, because they know why every column exists.
Their job is to answer the developers' questions, review the data before it moves, try the screens out with colleagues, and decide when the old file closes. If you leave it all to the software company, you'll get screens that are technically correct and look nothing like the way your team works. Give this person real time during the transition weeks, and lighten their load instead of stacking the task on top of a full job.
Off-the-shelf system or one built for you?
If the way you work is close to other companies in your sector, start with off-the-shelf software. If your way of working is what sets you apart, or you can't find software that connects your processes, a system built for you is worth looking into. We set out the criteria in custom software or off-the-shelf.
Send us a description of your current files through the contact page, and we'll suggest the first module worth moving. Or read about our custom software and systems service.
Questions our partners ask
Can I move my data from Excel into the system?
In most cases, yes. We review the files first, clean up duplicates and the different ways dates and names were written, then move the data and check it with your team before going live.
What if my team is used to Excel?
That's normal. We design the first screens close to what they know, keep export to Excel available for reports, and train the team before launch day.
Written by the Visual Innovate team, the people who build, host and follow up systems, websites and apps for our clients in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Egypt.
