Seven signs you have outgrown your spreadsheet
1. A funder asks a simple question and it takes you a day to answer
"How many people did you support last year?" It sounds straightforward. But if answering it means opening several files, filtering, copying, cross-checking and a long afternoon with a calculator, that is time taken away from the people you are there to help. It is also the kind of task that tends to land on a Friday afternoon, just before a deadline.
2. The same person appears three times, spelled three different ways
Margaret Jones, Maggie Jones and M. Jones might all be the same lovely lady who comes to your Tuesday group. Duplicates creep in quietly, and they cause real problems. People get contacted twice, or not at all, and your totals become something you hope are right rather than know are right.
3. Only one person really understands how it all works
Every spreadsheet has a keeper. They know which tab is current, what the colour coding means and why column K must never be touched. That is fine until they go on holiday, fall ill or move on to a new role. When knowledge lives in one person's head, your service is more fragile than it looks.
4. Sensitive information is sitting somewhere it shouldn't
Case notes in a shared folder. A file of contact details attached to an email. A spreadsheet open on a laptop in a busy café. Spreadsheets have no easy way of saying "this volunteer can see someone's phone number but not their support notes". If you work with people in difficult circumstances, that matters, and it is something your trustees will want to know you are taking seriously.
5. Follow ups slip through the cracks
A spreadsheet won't tap you on the shoulder to say that a review call is due next Tuesday. When follow ups are missed, it is almost never because staff don't care. It is because the system they are using gives them no prompt, and they are juggling a hundred other things.
6. Reporting takes longer than the work it describes
Funders increasingly want to know what changed for people, not just how many came through the door. Pulling that evidence together by hand every quarter is slow, stressful and easy to get wrong. If your team dreads reporting season, your spreadsheet may be part of the reason.
7. You have started to wince at "Can we just add a column?"
A new funder wants a new measure. A new project needs a new field. Each request seems small, but every extra column and tab makes the file a little harder to use. When people are nervous of touching it in case it breaks, the spreadsheet is telling you something.
