When should we replace spreadsheets with software?
Spreadsheets are great—until concurrency, permissions, and audit trails break down.
Excel/Sheets shine for one owner, low volume, and simple calculations. Pain starts with copies of “final_v7”, unclear latest truth, broken formulas, and no real permissions. When two people edit at once—or the field team needs mobile status—spreadsheets stop being an operating system.
Move toward software when you need near-real-time updates, customer-facing status, role-based views, automatic alerts, one-click reports, or an audit trail (who changed what). A few of these signals are enough to justify a panel for the worst flow first.
You do not have to kill every spreadsheet on day one. Digitise the most painful workflow; keep temporary sheets elsewhere. A clean data model makes later migration easier.
The aim is not a war on Excel—it is fixing the process that is already breaking.
