Spreadsheets, software
or something
built for you?

Every growing business hits the day the spreadsheet stops being enough: two people editing the same file, a customer typed in three places, a Friday afternoon lost to a report. The question that follows (“buy something, or build our own?”) usually gets answered by whoever shouts loudest or by the first vendor demo. This tool answers it from how the business actually runs, with every reason written out.

Twelve questions, each scoring points to three columns: stay on spreadsheets, buy software, build your own. The read is the leading column, with three override rules (a tie, a close call, a small budget) that are also on this page. You see the columns, every rule that fired, the risk of each path, and what to build or buy now versus later. The headline is never gated; an email unlocks the full scoring table. It never calls an AI model: the scoring is arithmetic you can check.

Owners and office managers of businesses between about five and fifty people who run on spreadsheets, a job app and the accounting system, and feel the seams. Trades and home services first, where the job is the unit of everything, and just as much clinics, distributors, agencies and small manufacturers.

It is not a software comparison, and it does not pick a product. It tells you which kind of answer fits, so the next conversation (with a vendor or with us) starts from the right question. The free diagnostic is where that conversation happens; this tool links to it and does not repeat it.

Each answer adds points to the three columns. The leading column is the read, unless an override rule applies:

1. A tie with spreadsheets goes to software. Spreadsheets only win outright.
2. Custom leads but the first-year budget is under $20,000: buy now, build later.
3. Custom and SaaS within 2 points of each other (either way): buy now, build later, with the build planned for the parts the software fights.

The “what it costs you” line uses the middle of the re-typing and reporting bands you picked (under-2: 1 h, 2-8: 5 h, over-8: 10 h; under-1: 0.5 h, 1-4: 2.5 h, over-4: 6 h) times your hourly cost, times 52. The three fixes are the re-typing cost, the reporting cost and, when the data lives in two or three places, half or a quarter of both for a system of record, ranked by money.

Every rule, with its points for spreadsheets / SaaS / custom. These are our judgment as operators, not a statistic; disagree with one and the result shows what changes.

• Budget bands are in your own currency. Nothing converts; the bands read the same on both sites by design, because the step between them matters more than the exact dollar.
• Hours per band for the cost line are the middle of each band, listed above. Set the hourly cost yourself.
• No AI in the scoring. A free-text “describe your process” step that drafts a process map was specified and may come later; it would never score or recommend.
• Rounding. Figures are rounded so the cost line doesn’t pretend to be exact.

The answers the questionnaire opens with: a 5 to 15-person trades business growing steadily, a few people a year, with the same customer and job data in three or more places, 2 to 8 hours a week of re-typing, a process that is mostly standard, a few of our own twists, 3 to 5 hand-offs a job, changes about once a year, 1 to 4 hours a week of hand-built reports, most of the crew, every day on phones, needing to connect to one thing (usually accounting), a first-year budget of $5,000 to $20,000, and an owner who would rather own the data. Office time costs $35 an hour.

The columns score Spreadsheets 0, SaaS 17, Custom 5. SaaS leads The read is buy software: Your process is close enough to standard that someone has already built it. Pick the tool that holds the customer and the job in one place and connect it to the books.

The current setup costs about $13,700 a year (5 hours of re-typing and 2.5 of reporting a week). First: one record for customers and jobs: pick the system of record and move the data once. The biggest fix is stop the re-typing, worth $9,100 a year. Change the budget to over $60,000, or the process to “particular to us”, and watch the read move.