A spreadsheet against a procurement system

What a spreadsheet does well

It is available, everybody knows how to use it, and it obliges nobody to learn a system. A business starting out with one supplier and five orders a month needs nothing else.

Where it breaks

• No link between documents: the order is in the sheet, the delivery note is in a binder and the invoice is in email, and nobody compares them
• No permissions: whoever can see can also change, and whoever changed is not recorded
• No stop: a spreadsheet cannot hold a payment, because it does not know that something is wrong
• No single source of truth: there are three versions of the same file, and one of them is right

What a system adds

What happens as the business grows

A spreadsheet does not break in a day. It breaks slowly: a tab is added, a column is added, a second file appears for the second location, and then somebody sends a version over WhatsApp and from that moment there are two truths.

The clearest sign is not the size of the file but the question “which version are we working from”. Once it is asked, the spreadsheet has already stopped being the source of truth.

What does not transfer from the spreadsheet

The habit of “I will remember to check”. A method that rests on one person’s memory works perfectly until the day he is on holiday, and stops working without announcing it.

InPlace asks nobody to remember. The comparison of order, receipt and invoice runs every time, and an invoice that arrived on a busy day is checked exactly as closely.

When it is worth moving

When more than one person touches the same purchase. The moment an order passes between procurement, whoever receives the goods and the accountant, the spreadsheet no longer describes reality but only a part of it.

You can start with one supplier and leave the spreadsheet open beside the system. Comparing the two after a month is the most honest test available.

Why a spreadsheet cannot stop a payment

This is not a question of how well the spreadsheet is built. You can put formulas in it that turn every gap between two columns red, and it still stops nothing, because the payment does not pass through it. It happens somewhere else: at the bank, on the phone, in a transfer someone made because the supplier called.

A system stops things because it sits on the route. The payment request is created inside it, the approval is given inside it, and the accountant pays from it. An invoice that was never checked simply has no way to become an approved request.

The difference is not between a clever tool and a dim one. It is between a tool that describes reality and a tool that reality passes through.

You can keep exporting to a spreadsheet

Yes, and it is not a concession. The owner and the accountant see reports and export them, and the monthly export is part of the accountant’s ordinary work alongside reconciliations and credit notes.

What changes is the direction. The spreadsheet stops being the place the data lives and is kept, and becomes the place you take it to when you want to cut it a different way. That is the use a spreadsheet is genuinely good at.

How much work is it to move the suppliers over

Less than it looks, because there is no need to move everything. Start with one supplier, usually the one that generates most of the orders or most of the trouble, and leave the rest in the spreadsheet for now.

The most honest test is to run both side by side for a month. At the end of it the comparison is not between two feature lists but between two pictures of the same business, and one of them caught things the other missed, or it did not.