The spreadsheets I used for 5 years were useless, switched to a simple tracker last quarter

I used to track every vendor approval in a massive Excel file with color codes and macros, but nobody could read it and we kept missing deadlines. Now I just log each decision in a shared Google Sheet with one date column and a status dropdown, why did I overthink this for so long? Has anyone else ditched fancy tools for something embarrassingly simple?

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elizabetha9228d ago

Wait, has anyone thought about what happens when the person who made that simple tracker leaves the company? I've seen this exact thing play out twice. The simple sheet works great until the one person who knows why the dropdown has 4 options instead of 12 quits, then nobody can figure out what "pending review" actually means in context. The fancy Excel file at least had a macro that forced people to fill in a comments box. Simple tools only work if the team actually uses them the same way, and that takes way more discipline than people admit. But honestly, if it's just you and one other person, simple is fine. The real test is how it holds up when a new hire sits down and has to figure out the process from scratch.