Excel is a great program, it’s easily accessible, it can do a lot of tasks, and a huge amount of businesses use it for one reason or another. We are so used to seeing them and using them that its what a lot of people first turn to when it comes to recording parts of their business.
But the thing is, the spreadsheets that you are creating and spending hours of time populating, aren’t stable. There was a study done by the University of Hawaii that found that 88% of spreadsheets contain errors – 88%!!!
They are incredibly susceptible to human error, a simple decimal point in the wrong spot can cause huge errors leading to issues such as financial loss and even some CEO’s losing their jobs!
In the past, excel was a superstar tool for managing your finances, your projects, your HR and everything in between.
Today it comes with lots of issues such as no audit trail, simple mistakes having huge flow on effects, lack of collaboration, loads of manual data entry – especially when wanting to add or change information (how many formulas and links will you need to update!), security issues, and unless you spend all day every day up to your eyeballs in sheets, it’s really hard to analyse the data!
So what should you be doing?
Using dedicated business tools takes away the hassle of maintaining spreadsheets, it increases your efficiency, and it reduces your risk. My personal recommendations are:
- Finances should be done with accounting software such as Xero.
- Project Management through ClickUp
- Timetracking and scheduling through TSheets or the Payroll function on Xero.
- KPI and Sales dashboards through your CRM such as ActiveCampaign
While it can be hard to let go and change what it is you have been doing, the rewards for getting rid of your spreadsheets are huge!
If you need help to figure out a way that you can remove spreadsheets from your business, get in touch NOW!
