Spreadsheet replacement · UK
It runs the job list, the stock sheet, the quoting workbook or the customer list. It was built years ago by somebody who has since left, and it has grown a tab and a formula at a time ever since. It locks up when two people open it, a deleted row breaks three other tabs silently, and there's a file called jobs_FINAL_v3(2).xlsx that nobody's certain is the live one. I rebuild it as a web application that runs in a browser: office PC, tablet wherever the work happens, phone on a customer's site.
Send me what you're running now and I'll tell you exactly what it would take to replace it, in writing, free.
The symptoms
If you have seen two or three of these, the spreadsheet isn't at fault. It's doing exactly what a calculator does when it's asked to behave like a shared system.
This workbook is locked for editing by another user.
Someone left it open at their desk. Everyone else waits until they close it or their laptop times out.
#REF!
A row got deleted from the middle of the sheet and every formula that pointed at it broke, quietly, three tabs away from where anyone was looking.
Excel found unreadable content in 'stock_master.xlsx'. Do you want us to try to recover the contents of this workbook?
The file corrupted on the shared drive overnight. Nobody's sure how old the last version anyone trusts actually is.
jobs_FINAL_v3(2)_USE THIS ONE.xlsx
Three people have a copy on their desktop. Two of them are out of date and nobody's certain which.
The honest explanation
None of it is your fault and it usually isn't a sign the spreadsheet was built badly. Four things are going on and they compound.
A spreadsheet is excellent at working things out and poor at proving what happened. It cannot reliably tell you who changed a value, when, or whether a closed record was edited afterwards. Those are the exact things a shared business record needs to do.
A cell that held a formula gets overwritten by someone typing a number straight into it. Nothing warns you. The sheet still opens, still looks right, and quietly stops calculating from that day, sometimes for months before anyone notices.
A workbook opened by several people over a network share becomes read-only for everyone after the first person in, or worse, gets overwritten by whoever saves last. Excel was built for one person working things out. Several people editing the same file at once was never the design.
Years of somebody adding a column, then a hidden helper tab, then another. Nobody now remembers what half of them feed into or whether it's safe to delete them. The person who understood why has left.
The replacement
A web application. Same fields, same job numbers, same rules, same way of working, running on something that was designed for the job from the start.
Have a proper go on a working example. It's live, with made-up data and there's nothing to sign up for.
The bit everyone asks first
It comes with you. All of it. Your rows get exported out of the spreadsheet, checked and imported into the new application, so on day one you open it and your jobs, customers, parts and history are already there. You are not starting from an empty screen and you are not retyping ten years of records.
Your original file is never touched. I work from a copy. The spreadsheet stays exactly where it is, on your drive, doing what it does now, right up until you decide to switch over. If you read the blueprint and decide not to bother, you have lost nothing.
And it goes back out again whenever you want. Every screen exports to a spreadsheet, so your accountant, your auditor or the person who simply prefers Excel can have the data in a file they can open without asking me for anything. That matters more than it sounds: it means your data never stops being yours in a format you control.
One caveat worth stating plainly: the data comes across as it is. If ten years of typing has left three spellings of the same customer name, those three spellings arrive with it. I'll tell you what I spot, but I can't warrant historic data I didn't enter.
What it costs
Starting priceFrom £1,950
£1,950 is where it starts, not what everything costs. A spreadsheet with one tab and a handful of formulas is not the same as four linked workbooks and twenty years of formulas feeding each other. Pretending otherwise would mean either quoting you a number I can't build to, or padding the price of the simple jobs to cover the hard ones.
So the blueprint comes first and it's free. You get the real figure in writing before you commit anything and that figure is fixed once you accept it. It doesn't move because the work turned out harder than I expected.
Quotes hold for 30 days. The only thing that changes a fixed price afterwards is finding that what I received is materially different from what was described: four linked workbooks instead of one, macros nobody mentioned, a second process bolted onto the first. In that case I'll either requote, which you're free to decline, or withdraw and refund your deposit in full.
How it works
Email me a copy of the spreadsheet, or a few screenshots if the file is too big or too sensitive to send. Tell me what it's meant to do.
Within two working days, in writing: what it would become, what it wouldn't do, how long it'd take and exactly what it'd cost. No charge, no obligation.
From two weeks. You get a link to try halfway through, not a surprise at the end. Half the fee up front, half when it's live.
Run both side by side for as long as you like. The spreadsheet stays where it is until you're satisfied. Then you stop opening it.
After it's built
Your spreadsheet didn't break the week it was written. It broke because the business moved, the sheet grew, more people needed to touch it and nothing moved with it. A new system goes the same way if nobody's looking after it.
Hosting, backups, security updates and small changes as you settle into it. Nothing to pay and nothing to set up. Alongside that, there's a 90-day warranty on defects. If it does not do what the blueprint said, I fix it.
You choose when you accept the quote and I'll remind you in writing a fortnight before the first payment is due. Cancel any time and you keep the software, the code and the data.
If you'd rather not take support: that's fine and it costs nothing. I keep it running for a further 30 days so you can arrange where it's going, then it comes off my hosting and stops working on the address I provided. The software is still yours. It just needs to live somewhere else. Your files and a full data export are free on request either way.
Where the line is
None of this is off the table. It's just more work, so it costs more and takes longer. Told to you now, rather than halfway through the job.
Everything on that list is possible: customer portals, dashboards, photo evidence, reminders, barcode scanning, certificates generated as PDFs. It's a bigger job with a bigger price. Say what you're after in your first email and the blueprint will tell you what it'd take, free either way.
Questions
Sometimes and if that's genuinely the cheaper answer I'll say so in the blueprint. But most of the failures above are structural. A spreadsheet is a calculator being asked to behave like a shared record, and no amount of tidying changes what it fundamentally is.
Not usually. I'm rebuilding what the spreadsheet does, not lifting the formulas out of it. What I need is the sheet itself and someone who can explain the rules: what a formula is actually working out, what happens when a row gets marked complete, which fields are mandatory. That conversation is worth more than the formula bar.
Right up to the day you switch and afterwards if you want. I work from a copy, so your file carries on as normal throughout. Most people run both for a week or two, then quietly stop opening the old one.
You take everything. The application files and a full export of your data are yours free on request, whenever you ask, whether or not you're paying for support. There's an optional £250 handover pack if you want it done properly: the files, the export, a written guide covering deployment, backup and restore, plus an hour on a call with whoever's taking it on.
No to both. It's hosted and it runs in a browser. If your staff can open a website, they can use it.
I do. There's no team, no account manager and nobody in a call centre. You email me, I answer, I build it, which is also why I take on a few of these at a time and will tell you early if yours isn't a good fit.
Related
Who you'd be dealing with
Joe Thorp
My trade is inspection: looking at something complicated, working out what's actually wrong with it and saying so plainly. Twenty years of it, in an industry where getting it wrong isn't an option.
A spreadsheet that's been patched for eight years has exactly the same tells as a part that's been repaired one too many times. Somebody made a sensible decision, then another, then a workaround and the sum of them is a thing nobody trusts but everybody depends on. Reading that is the job I've always done.
Which is also why the blueprint is free and why it sometimes says don't bother. I'd rather tell you the truth about a database than sell you a replacement you didn't need.
Start here
Attach a copy of the workbook, or a few screenshots if it's too big to email. Tell me in a line or two what it's supposed to do. Within two working days you'll get a written breakdown: what it would become, how long it'd take and exactly what it'd cost.
The blueprint is free whether or not you ever hire me. No sales call unless you ask for one.