Keep Excel. Stop the breakage.
Your team knows its spreadsheets and doesn't want to learn a new system. That can be the right call. What you need is for the workbook to stop breaking, stop slowing down, and stop depending on one person.
What changes, and what doesn't
On the surface, very little: the same workbook, the same tabs, the same buttons. Underneath, the fragile parts move somewhere sturdier:
- Copy and paste becomes Power Query. The monthly import from your bank, carrier or supplier refreshes with one click instead of an afternoon of pasting.
- The giant sheet becomes a proper database. Ten years of orders stop living in 80,000 rows that slow everything down. The workbook reads what it needs, and several people can work at once.
- Macros get signed and tidied. They run without security warnings, and they're written so the next update doesn't break them.
- Office Scripts, where they fit. Some jobs can run in the browser version of Excel. We'll tell you plainly where they can't: they don't do everything desktop Excel does, and long jobs hit a time limit.
An example
From our sample Spreadsheet Checkup, for a fictional insurance agency:
Before. Six carrier statements, each in its own layout, pasted into the commission workbook by hand every month. About six hours of one person's time, and when a column landed in the wrong place, nothing said so.
After. Power Query reads all six statements with one refresh, and a check confirms each carrier's total against its statement. About twenty minutes a month, and a wrong paste can no longer slip through. The workbook stays; the routine around it gets sturdy.
Is Strengthen enough?
Strengthen is the right step when the workbook mostly works, one or two people use it, and the problem is fragility, not size. If several people need it at the same time, from different places, or on a tablet or phone, an Upgrade will serve you better, and we'll say so.
Not sure? A Spreadsheet Checkup ($395) tells you which step fits, in writing. About the Checkup
Price
Fixed price per project, quoted after a look at the file or a Checkup. If you had a Checkup in the last 60 days, its $395 comes off.