The spreadsheet is not the problem
A spreadsheet is the right tool to start with. It costs next to nothing, everyone can open it, and it adapts as the business takes shape. At Hacot & Co, which services water softeners in people's homes, the customer base lived in an Excel file. At Harmonie Nutrition Équine, an online retailer in Normandy, stock was tracked in a home-made spreadsheet, because its management software is not built for detailed stock tracking.
Both files did their job. The real question is not whether Excel is a good tool, but when it starts taking more time than it saves.
Five signs the file has done its time
Only one person can keep it up
At Hacot & Co, everything went through one employee: the file, the calls to customers, the rounds plotted by hand on Google Maps. The day she is away, planning stops. A file nobody else dares to edit is a risk, even when it is perfectly kept.
It copies what another tool already knows
At Harmonie, orders came in through the online shop, stock lived in the spreadsheet and invoicing in the management software, each on its own. Every sale had to be copied across by hand. When a file spends its time copying another piece of software, that time can disappear.
Follow-ups depend on someone's memory
A file warns nobody. Someone has to remember to open it, sort it, then make the calls. At Hacot & Co, each customer was reached by phone or email, one by one, to book their service visit.
A mistake is costly
At Harmonie, a missed use-by date means a product pulled from sale. A batch recall is worse: you need to know what it went into and which customers to warn. A spreadsheet can tell you, provided every line was entered correctly, on the day, by everyone.
The work happens away from the office
Hacot & Co's technician spends the day on the road. Harmonie's team receives deliveries and manufactures on site. A file is hard to fill in on a phone, standing up, between two boxes.
What the application does instead
The most visible change is not the screen. It is everything that no longer has to be done by hand.
| Before, in the file | Now, in the application |
|---|---|
| Stock updated by hand after sales | Each online order deducts stock, packaging included |
| Use-by dates checked when someone remembers | An alert when a batch is 60 days from its use-by date |
| Traceability sheet filled in separately | Filled in from production, batch by batch |
| Rounds plotted on Google Maps | Service visits grouped by area every month |
| Each customer called one by one | Invitations, confirmations and reminders by SMS and email |
Before and after taken from our case studies Harmonie Nutrition Équine (stock application in service since October 2026) and Hacot & Co (planning application in service since July 2026).
The application also enforces a rule the file could only hope for. At Harmonie, the batch with the earliest use-by date goes out first, for sales and for production alike, without anyone having to think about it.
When you should keep the file
Custom software is not always the answer. If one person uses the file, for one purpose, without copying it anywhere else, improve it instead: a proper table, drop-down lists, input checks. If an off-the-shelf product already does what your trade needs, at a reasonable price, buy it.
Custom software makes sense when off-the-shelf products do not fit the way you work, or when tools that do not talk to each other need connecting. That was the case at Harmonie: no product linked the shop, batches, production and traceability.
How the move actually happens
The risk in changing tools is not the technology. It is the transition, the day the old file stops and the new tool must hold the right data. Here is how we handled it at Harmonie.
- Describe what the file really does. The audit of the whole organisation, from April to June 2026, had described every tool and put stock at the top of the roadmap.
- Show a first version very early. It was running two days after signature, then it was adjusted to the trade with the team over two months.
- Check every user journey. Acceptance testing raised 32 points, all fixed and checked before go-live.
- Take over the data with a template. We provide the file template, the team fills it in, then we import it. At Hacot & Co, customers and properties were taken over from the Excel file, and a monthly import adds the new ones.
- Set a switchover date. Opening stock is a count on a date agreed with the team, so that no order is deducted twice. Before that, a full rehearsal of 38 steps, about two hours on computer and phone.
What it costs
On the French market, a first tool covering a single process costs between €5,000 and €15,000, and maintenance usually runs at 15 to 20% of the development cost each year. Read our article on prices
The right starting point is still the time the file takes you each week, multiplied by the hourly cost of the people who keep it. That is what you can reasonably invest. Read the Harmonie case study
