NIDAVA
Almost every company we work with started on spreadsheets, and that was the right call. A spreadsheet is fast, free and everyone knows it. The trouble starts when the business grows and the files don't change with it.
The numbers don't agree
Sales says one figure, the warehouse says another, and accounts has a third. Each team keeps its own file, and each file is right on its own terms. When a meeting starts with twenty minutes of working out whose number is correct, the spreadsheets have stopped saving time.
One person holds the whole system
There is usually one employee who knows which file is the latest, which tab holds the real prices and which formula breaks if you add a row. When they are on leave, work slows down. When they leave the company, part of the company leaves with them.
If only one person can explain the file, the file is a risk, not a tool.
Reports take days, not minutes
A manager asks for sales by branch for last quarter. Someone collects files from three branches, copies them into one, fixes the columns that don't match and sends it two days later. By then the question has moved on.
Nobody knows who changed what
A price was edited, a row deleted, a total overwritten. In a shared spreadsheet there is rarely a record of who did it or when. For anything touching money or stock, that missing trail is the real problem.
Dinar, dollar and the branches
Invoicing in two currencies, branches in different governorates, stock moving between them: spreadsheets can handle all of it, but only with more files, more copying and more chances to get it wrong.
What to do next
Moving to a system doesn't mean throwing the spreadsheets away on day one. Start with the process that hurts most, usually inventory or invoicing, put it in one shared system, and move the rest once the team trusts it. The old files become the data you import, not the work you do every day.
