The spreadsheet was right until it wasn’t.
Nobody was wrong to build it. It has probably run the business for years and it bends to whatever you need, which is more than most software manages. This is about the point where it stops coping — and about the businesses that have not reached it and should not be sold anything.
It is not the spreadsheet. It is the second one.
One sheet is fine. The trouble starts when there is a sheet for stock, a book for invoices and a third file for what people owe — because now the job is not recording the business, it is making three records of it agree.
Records ERP is one set of records. A sale moves the stock, the stock carries its cost, and the accounts fall out of the same entries — so there is nothing left to reconcile at month end.
Six signs it has stopped coping.
If none of these sound like you, close this page with our blessing.
Two people had the file open
Somebody saved a copy called Final, then a copy called Final 2, and now nobody is sure which one this morning’s figures came from. Spreadsheets have no answer to two people at once, and every workaround is a filing convention somebody eventually forgets.
The count never matches the book
You count the store on Saturday and the sheet says something else. With no record of each movement in and out, there is nothing to walk back through — so the difference gets typed over, and the next difference starts from a number nobody trusts.
Nobody knows what a run actually cost
You know what the raw materials cost and what the sacks sold for. What one bag cost to make — after the batch that went wrong, the price that changed mid-month and the transfer to the depot — is a question a spreadsheet can only answer by someone rebuilding it by hand.
Who owes you is a different number in every file
The invoice book says one thing, the payments sheet another, and the customer on the phone a third. Without one place where an invoice and its payments live together, the argument is always about whose file is right.
Month end takes a week
The work is not accounting. It is making three sheets agree with each other before the accountant will look at them, and doing it again next month because nothing about the process changed.
Only one person can actually use it
The formulas are in somebody’s head. When they travel, the business slows down; when they leave, a good deal of how it runs leaves with them.
When you should stay on Excel.
One or two people. Buying and reselling, nothing made. Stock in one place, and the count generally agrees with the book. That business does not have the problems this system solves, and paying us would be buying a cure for an illness you have not got. The spreadsheet is free, you already know it, and it does not need a supplier.
Come back when there is a second store, or a second person typing the same figures, or the day you start making something rather than only moving it.
What actually changes.
- Everyone works in the same records at the same time — no Final 2, no whose-copy-is-right.
- Every movement in and out of every store is written down, so a count that disagrees can be walked back through rather than typed over.
- A production run records what went in and what came out, so you know what a bag cost to make — including the batch that went wrong.
- An invoice and its payments live together, so what a customer owes is one number and they can see it themselves on their phone.
- The accounts build from the same entries. Your accountant gets a trial balance, a profit and loss and a balance sheet without anybody reconciling anything.
- Everything exports back out to a spreadsheet whenever you want it. Nothing here is a trap.
Questions people ask.
- When should I move off Excel?
- The three practical signals are people, places and production. More than one person needing to enter or read the same figures at the same time; stock in more than one store, so transfers have to be tracked rather than remembered; or anything you make rather than only buy and resell, because a spreadsheet cannot cost a production run without somebody rebuilding it by hand. One of those is manageable. Two together is usually when the spreadsheet starts costing more than it saves.
- Should I stay on Excel?
- Quite possibly. If you are one or two people, buying and reselling with no production, holding stock in one place, and the count generally matches the book — Excel is free, you already know it, and it bends to whatever you need. You would be paying us to solve problems you do not have. Come back when there is a second store or a second person entering figures.
- Is it hard to move? We have years of spreadsheets.
- You do not bring years of history. You bring what is true today: your customers, your suppliers, your products, what people currently owe you and what you owe. Those come in from a spreadsheet — the format you already have — and if the import goes wrong the whole thing undoes in one action. The old files stay exactly where they are; nothing is deleted.
- Do I need a consultant to set it up?
- No, and there is no consulting fee. We set it up with you: your products, your stores, your opening balances, your people. That is included in the price rather than quoted separately, because a system nobody finished setting up is the most common way this goes wrong.
- What does it cost, and does it go up per person?
- Ksh 96,000 a year for the business, however many people use it — or Ksh 9,500 a month, or Ksh 180,000 once. The storekeeper, the clerks and the reps all get their own accounts at no extra cost, which matters more than it sounds: the moment a seat costs money, somebody starts sharing a login and the record of who did what is gone. Thirty days free first, and no card to start.
- What happens to the carbon-copy books?
- Most businesses keep them for a while, and that is sensible. Run both for a month on the same transactions and compare at the end of it — if the two do not agree, far better to find out then. After that people usually stop writing the book because it has become the slower copy of something they already have.
Keep the books. Run one month through both.
Thirty days free, no card, and we do the setup with you. At the end of the month compare the two — that is the only test that means anything.
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