Your Spreadsheet Is Running Your Business

There's a file. Everyone knows the file. It has fourteen tabs, a colour code only one person understands, and a column called FINAL that isn't. When that person goes on leave, the business slows down.

Spreadsheets are where systems start

That's fine. A spreadsheet is the fastest way to work out what you need. Trouble starts when it becomes the system: three copies of the file, each slightly different; approvals given in WhatsApp and lost; a report that takes a day to compile and is out of date when it lands; no record of who changed what.

What replaces it

An internal tool is a small web app built around exactly how your team works, and nothing more.

One sign-in, with roles. Staff see their work, managers approve, owners see everything.
Forms instead of free-for-all cells, so data goes in the same way every time.
Approvals with an audit trail: who approved, when, and what they saw at the time.
Dashboards that update as the work happens, instead of a report someone compiles on Friday.
Exports, PDF reports and alerts generated for you.

Your spreadsheet becomes the spec. I import the data, keep the columns that earn their place and turn the rest into proper records.

Three shapes it often takes

An admin dashboard for operations, covering orders, jobs, assets or requests: Internal Tool & Admin Dashboard, from $420.

A CRM shaped to how you sell, with WhatsApp, email and call notes on each contact's timeline: Custom CRM, from $650.

An appraisal system for organisations still circulating paper forms: Performance Appraisal System, from $950.

Built for teams much bigger than yours

I've built performance management platforms for the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), and an asset register with geotagged assets for the NYSC with ReliefLine. A ten-person company needs the same things at a smaller scale: clear roles, clean data and reports that build themselves.

A spreadsheet is a great first draft of a system. It makes a poor final one.

Start here

Send me the spreadsheet, with anything sensitive removed, and a sentence on what goes wrong with it. I'll reply with what I'd build and what it would cost: start here or book a free call.