Six Questions to Ask Before You Move Off Spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are not the enemy. They are the right tool until a specific moment — and these six questions tell you whether you have reached it.
We are not going to tell you spreadsheets are bad. Half of our customers ran their practice on one for years, and for many of those years it was the right choice. The question is not whether spreadsheets work — they do — but whether they still work for you. Six questions.
1. Does more than one person edit it?
A spreadsheet with one author is a database. A spreadsheet with three is a negotiation. If you have ever asked "who changed this?" and not been able to find out, you have answered the question.
2. Do the rows have files?
The tenancy row has an agreement. The investigation row has photos. The client row has a signed engagement letter. If those files live in a folder whose name you have to match by hand to the row, every row is one rename away from orphaning its evidence.
3. Do the rows have dates that matter?
A due date in a cell does nothing. A due date in a case creates a task, appears on a calendar, and emails someone before it passes. If you have a "next action" column that you scan by eye every Monday, you are the automation.
4. Do you ever need to show someone one row and not the others?
Sharing a spreadsheet shares the spreadsheet. If you have ever copied a row into a fresh sheet so a client could see their matter without seeing everyone else's, you have built, by hand, the thing a case system does by default.
5. Has anyone typed "see notes" in a cell?
That cell was a paragraph trying to become a record. It is where the actual state of the matter lives, and no filter, sort or chart can reach it.
6. Could a colleague pick it up tomorrow?
Not "understand the columns" — pick it up. Find the files, know who the parties are, see what was said last and what is due next. If the honest answer is "they would need an hour with me first", the spreadsheet is a memory aid for one person, not a record.
If you answered yes to three or more
Your spreadsheet is already a database with a case per row. The move is smaller than it looks: a template with one field per column and one table per "see notes" paragraph, a CSV import for the rows, and a habit of attaching files to the case instead of the folder. Most teams are running within a day, and the spreadsheet stays where it is as the archive it always really was.
