General
The spreadsheet became the system of record
When an Excel or Google Sheets file runs payroll, scheduling or billing, and only one person understands it, the business is one bad paste away from a real problem.
I turn that spreadsheet into software with the same logic, real permissions and a history of every change, usually as a Consolidate build at $20,000.
What this usually looks like
A workbook with fifteen tabs, a few hundred formulas and color codes only one person can read. Everyone else is told not to touch it.
Data goes in from accounting exports, CRM reports and emails, by hand. Data comes out by hand too, into invoices, payroll and messages to the team.
When that one person is on vacation, the work waits. When they make a typo, someone gets paid wrong.
Why it got this way
Spreadsheets are the fastest way to start anything, and they were the right call when the business was smaller. Nobody decided to run payroll in Excel. It just grew there.
No SaaS tool fit the way you actually calculate things, so the logic stayed in formulas. The spreadsheet is really a custom app that nobody wrote down.
The fix, three ways
Connect, $5,000
keep the tools, fix the plumbing
If the spreadsheet is mostly copying data between tools, Connect at $5,000 moves that data automatically, and the sheet shrinks to the part people actually decide on. It is the wrong choice if the spreadsheet holds your business rules.
Consolidate, $20,000
one app for the daily work, keep what still earns its place
This is the usual fix. For $20,000, I rebuild the spreadsheet's logic as an app with roles, validation and a history of every change, and connect it to the tools that stay. Your formulas become rules that cannot be pasted over.
Replace, $75,000 to $100,000
rebuild the part of the big platform you actually use
If the spreadsheet is one of many workarounds around a big platform, Replace at $75,000 to $100,000 rebuilds the part of the platform you use and folds the spreadsheet in.
What it looks like when it's done
At BigDog Solar, every rep's pay was worked out by hand in Excel. Spark replaced four tools and a payroll done by hand in Excel. It saves BigDog Solar 20+ hours a week of manual work and roughly $60,000 a year, and billing issues now live in 1 system instead of 3.
Years earlier at Unique Communications, I delivered a billing system for the US Army in Germany that replaced a pile of spreadsheets and two financial systems: 10 users billing 100,000 phone lines, over $1M a month.
Read more: Spark for BigDog Solar.
When you should not do this
If the spreadsheet works, one or two people use it, and nothing in it touches money, keep it. A spreadsheet is a fine tool.
If nobody on your side can sit with me and explain what the formulas are supposed to do, we need to fix that first.
Questions about this
When should a spreadsheet become an app?
When more than a couple of people edit it, when mistakes in it cost money, or when the business stops while its one expert is away. Payroll, commissions, billing and scheduling are the usual ones. If none of that is true, the spreadsheet is probably fine.
Will I lose my formulas and history?
No. Discovery maps what every formula does and why, and the app does the same math. Historical data is migrated in. The difference is that the rules are checked, permissioned and logged instead of living in cells anyone can overwrite.
Can I still export to Excel?
Yes. Your data lives in a standard Postgres database in your own account, so exporting to Excel or Google Sheets for analysis is easy. People can still work in a spreadsheet when they want to. It just stops being the system of record.