Seven signs your spreadsheets have stopped scaling

The seven signals

None of these are fatal on their own. Three or more at once is the point at which spreadsheets have stopped being cheaper than a system.

• Month-end takes longer than it did last year, with the same volume.
• Two departments quote different stock figures in the same meeting.
• Someone maintains a master spreadsheet that only they understand.
• Pricing and rebate rules live in email threads.
• You cannot tell what a job or batch actually cost without rebuilding it manually.
• Auditors ask for a trail the files cannot produce.
• Growth is blocked by headcount in admin rather than in sales or production.

When it is genuinely not time yet

If your process changes every quarter because the business model is still moving, a system will lock in decisions you have not made. We have told prospects to wait — and implemented for them a year later, faster and cheaper than we could have then.

What a sensible first step looks like

Not a twelve-month programme. A scoped finance and inventory rollout for one entity, with the rest phased in once users are comfortable, keeps the risk and the invoice proportionate.