Spreadsheet or app? Five signs it is time to switch

Most small businesses I meet run on spreadsheets, and for a long time that is exactly right. A spreadsheet is free, everyone knows how to use one, and you can change it in a minute. I would never tell anyone to replace a spreadsheet that works.

But there comes a point where the spreadsheet stops saving time and starts costing it. It rarely happens in one go. It creeps up, one extra tab and one extra copy at a time. Here are the five signs I see most often.

1. Two people, two versions

Someone saved a copy to work on at home. Someone else emailed one round on Friday. Now there are three versions of the rota, and nobody is sure which is right.

When more than one person needs the same information at the same time, a file that lives in one place and gets copied around will always drift. An app keeps one copy, and everyone sees the same thing the moment it changes.

2. It lives on one laptop

The rota, the price list or the job list sits on the owner's laptop. When that laptop is off, or in the van, nobody else can see it, and the phone starts ringing with questions only the spreadsheet can answer.

If your team works away from the office, the information needs to go with them. That usually means a phone, not a laptop.

3. You check the totals by hand

If you add the sums up again every Friday because you do not quite trust the formulas, the spreadsheet is not saving you time. It is giving you a second job.

The same goes for copying numbers from one sheet into another, or retyping figures from a paper form. Every time a number is typed twice, it can be typed wrong once.

4. The jobs that cost the most are the ten-minute ones

Chasing a quote that has gone quiet. Sending an invoice reminder. Telling a customer what time someone is coming. Each one only takes ten minutes, but do them forty times a month and they eat a working week.

These are the easiest things to hand over to software. Often it is a single automation rather than a whole app: a reminder that sends itself, or an enquiry form that drops straight into the right place.

5. Only one person understands it

Every business has one: the spreadsheet with forty tabs and colour coding that only its author can follow. It works beautifully until that person is on holiday, ill or leaves.

If the way your business runs depends on one person remembering how a file works, that is a risk worth fixing before it bites.

So what should you do?

Start small. You do not need to replace everything at once, and you may not need an app at all. Sometimes the honest answer is a tidier spreadsheet or an off-the-shelf tool, and I will say so.

If one of the signs above is costing you time every week, a single fix is often enough: what I call a Quick Win, from £200, usually done within a day or two. If several of them sound familiar, a focused tool built around how you already work, from £600, is typically live within two to three weeks.

The best way to see what is possible is to try it. The live demos are real apps I have built, running on made-up data, and you can click around them without signing up. Or book a free call and we will work out together which, if any, of these is worth fixing first.

Ashley Reynolds, AR Smart Tech Solutions