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Buying software
Signs your business has outgrown spreadsheets.
Spreadsheets are genuinely excellent, which is exactly why businesses keep using them long past the point where they have become a liability. Here is how to spot that point.
Published 14 September 2026 · Charis Muzenda
In defence of spreadsheets
They are the most successful business software ever made. Anyone can use one, they cost nothing extra, and they do not require a developer or a meeting. Most good systems started life as a spreadsheet that worked, and that is a compliment.
The problem is never the spreadsheet. It is that the business grew and the spreadsheet did not, and the gap is filled by people being careful.
Seven signs it has turned
1. There is a version with a name like "FINAL v3 USE THIS ONE"
The moment copies exist, you no longer have one truth. Somebody is working from last month's figures right now and does not know it.
2. Only one person really understands it
The formulas grew organically, the logic lives in their head, and everyone else asks them. That person cannot take leave without the process stopping, and if they leave permanently the knowledge goes with them.
3. Someone rebuilds the same report every month
Half a day, every month, producing something a system could generate on demand. That is six days a year of skilled time spent on copy and paste.
4. You cannot tell who changed what
A number is wrong and nobody can say when it changed or who changed it. For ordinary business this is annoying. In a regulated setting it is the difference between evidence and a claim, and inspectors know the difference.
5. Everyone can see everything
Spreadsheets have no meaningful permissions. If it holds staff details, client information or anything about a vulnerable person, then everyone who can open the file can read all of it. That is a data protection problem sitting quietly on a shared drive.
6. You find out about problems too late
A spreadsheet tells you a date has passed. It does not tell you a date is approaching. Every deadline depends on somebody remembering to look, which works until the week everyone is busy.
7. The same information lives in three places
A client's details in the quotes sheet, the invoicing system and the email signature list. Change an address and you change it three times, or more likely you change it twice.
What it is actually costing
The cost is rarely a dramatic failure. It is a slow tax, and because it never arrives as an invoice, it is easy to ignore.
- Time. Add up the rebuilding, the double entry and the checking. Multiply by 50 weeks and by the hourly cost of the people doing it.
- Errors. Not whether, but how often and how expensive. Most businesses have a story about one wrong cell.
- Key person risk. What happens the week the person who understands it is off?
- Decisions made on stale numbers. The quietest cost and usually the largest.
When to leave it alone
Plenty of spreadsheets should stay exactly as they are. If it is used by one or two people, changes rarely, holds nothing sensitive and nobody is rekeying from it, it is doing its job. Replacing a working spreadsheet with software is a common and expensive mistake.
The test is not complexity. It is whether the spreadsheet is now carrying a process that several people depend on and nobody can audit.
What replacing it looks like
Usually smaller than people fear. You are not replacing the spreadsheet, you are replacing the process it carries, and that is normally one workflow rather than a whole platform.
The version that works: pick the single worst spreadsheet, the one that causes the most chasing, and replace only that. Keep the rest. A narrow tool that people actually use beats a comprehensive one they work around.
The version that fails: try to replace everything at once, spend months in requirements meetings, deliver something enormous, and watch people quietly keep using the spreadsheet.
Where to start
- List every spreadsheet the business depends on.
- For each, note how many people touch it and what breaks when it is wrong.
- Pick the one with the most people and the worst failure.
- Work out what that one costs in hours per year.
If the answer is hours every week, it is worth fixing. If it is an hour a month, leave it alone and spend the money elsewhere. I will give you the same honest answer if you describe the situation, including when the answer is to keep the spreadsheet.
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