Spreadsheet or custom app: when does software pay off?

A spreadsheet is fine, for a while

Most business processes start life in a spreadsheet, and plenty of them should stay there. If one or two people use it, the rules are simple, and nothing goes wrong when it sits untouched for a week, you don’t need an app. We’d tell you so.

The trouble starts when the sheet becomes the thing the whole business leans on.

Signs it has outgrown the spreadsheet

• More than one person edits it, and you end up with copies called “final”, “final2” and “final REAL”.
• The same information gets typed into two or three places.
• Things slip through because nothing reminds anyone: a follow-up, a renewal, a deadline.
• One person understands how it works, and everyone is nervous when they’re on holiday.
• You’d like staff, clients or suppliers to see their own part and nothing else.
• Getting a simple report takes someone an afternoon.
• You pay for a piece of software and still keep a spreadsheet beside it to do what it can’t.

One or two of these is normal. If you recognise most of them, the sheet is costing you more than it looks.

Try ready-made software first

Before you build anything, check whether something that already exists does the job. A lot of it does, and it’s usually the cheaper place to start. Custom software starts to make sense when you’re bending the way you work to fit the tool, or paying for many users of a product that you only use a small part of.

How to compare the cost properly

This is the part people skip. Add up what you pay now over a year: subscriptions per user, add-ons, and the time lost to workarounds. Multiply it by the number of years you expect to keep going. Then put that next to a quote for a custom app, plus whatever it costs to run and look after.

Subscriptions never stop, and many of them charge more with every person you add. A custom app costs more at the start and can cost less to carry. Whether that works out in your favour depends on your numbers, which is why we work through them with you. Where possible we show how the cost of a custom app compares with what you use today, especially if it’s subscription-based, and how much you could save over time.

What a custom app looks like in practice

It might be a CRM that fits how you sell, a dashboard that pulls your figures into one place, a portal for your clients, or a tool for your own team. For Summit 13, an accountancy firm, we built one app that manages all their clients, accounting and bookkeeping work in one place, designed around how they already worked rather than the other way round. You can see more on the portfolio page. Their real system is private, so we only show an illustration.

Start with the part that hurts most

You don’t have to replace everything at once. Pick the one process that causes the most pain, such as quoting, job tracking or client onboarding, and start there. It’s easier to judge a small piece, and you’ll know quickly if it’s helping.

Not sure which one you have?

If you’re wondering whether you even need software or just a better website, our guide on website or custom software is a good starting point. If you’d rather talk it through, book a free 30-minute online meeting. We’ll tell you honestly if it isn’t worth building.