Five signs your business has outgrown spreadsheets

Nobody sets out to run a company on a shared sheet. It happens because a spreadsheet is free, instant, and good enough on day one. The problem is that it stays good enough for exactly as long as one person holds the whole process in their head.

The five signs

1. Somebody rebuilds the same report every month

If a person spends two days a month copying between sheets to produce a number the business needs, you are paying a salary for something a query answers instantly.

2. There are three versions and nobody knows which is current

The moment a file gets a _final_v2 suffix, the sheet has stopped being a record and started being a rumour.

3. You cannot tell who changed what

A cancelled bill or an edited price should have a name and a timestamp attached. Spreadsheets give you neither, which turns an ordinary mistake into an argument.

4. Access is all or nothing

Everyone can see salaries, or nobody can see anything. Real systems let you scope what each role sees, which is usually the point at which a growing team needs one.

5. The answer to a simple question takes a day

How many jobs are open right now? Which customers have not been followed up in two weeks? If those take an afternoon, decisions get made on feel rather than fact.

What a first version should look like

Not everything at once. A focused first version covers one department, with the workflow, the roles, and the two or three reports that matter. That typically runs NPR 200,000 to 600,000 and takes 6 to 12 weeks, delivered module by module so your team is using part of it while the rest is being built.

• One workflow, end to end, not five workflows half done.
• Roles and permissions from the start. Retrofitting them is painful.
• An export path, so your data is never trapped.
• Somebody on your side who owns adoption.

If you recognise three or more of the five signs, the sheet is already costing you more than the software would. Read more about custom software development in Nepal.