Spreadsheets are often the starting point for running projects.
They're quick to set up, familiar to everyone, and flexible enough to handle almost anything in the early stages of a business.
A small team might track projects in one sheet, log time in another, and keep upcoming work in a third. It isn't perfect, but it usually works well enough.
The challenge usually appears gradually as the team grows. More clients come in, more projects are running at once, and more people become involved in delivery. What once felt simple starts becoming harder to manage.
What once felt simple starts becoming harder to manage.
Spreadsheets remain one of the most widely used business tools today. A study by financial services firm Autorek suggests around 90% of organisations still rely on spreadsheets in core operations, despite the rise of specialised software platforms.
That reliance comes with risk.
A long-running academic review of spreadsheet research found that 94% of business spreadsheets contain errors, many of them in models used for decision-making.
In small teams those issues might not matter much. A mistake can be spotted quickly or corrected without major consequences.
But as the number of projects and people increases, the margin for error shrinks.
One of the first signs that spreadsheets are reaching their limits is a loss of visibility.
Managers start asking practical questions about who is working on what this week, who has capacity next month, and whether some teams are overloaded while others still have room.
When project data sits across several spreadsheets, answering those questions takes time.
Someone has to open multiple files, check different tabs, reconcile information, and piece together the current picture.
By the time the answer is clear, the situation may already have changed.
Forecasting future workload becomes even more difficult.
New projects may be listed in one spreadsheet while current delivery work sits in another. Capacity planning often lives somewhere else again.
Without a connected view, it's hard to see how upcoming work affects the team.
This is why many service businesses end up planning week by week instead of looking further ahead.
The symptoms are familiar: projects start slipping unexpectedly, people get double-booked, and capacity issues only become obvious once they are already difficult to fix.
The underlying problem is rarely the spreadsheet itself. It's the lack of connection between the information being tracked.
Time tracking often suffers as well.
When timesheets sit in a separate spreadsheet or tool, they can start to feel like administrative work rather than something useful.
People start logging time late, entries become rough estimates, and managers end up chasing missing hours before invoices can be finalised.
Over time, the data becomes unreliable, which defeats the purpose of tracking it in the first place.
Spreadsheets themselves aren't the real problem.
The issue is fragmentation.
Projects, time, and people are usually tracked in different places. Each spreadsheet holds part of the picture, but none of them show the whole thing.
For service teams, that missing view matters. It affects planning, delivery, forecasting, and revenue.
As organisations grow, the challenge isn't collecting information. It's connecting it in a way that makes sense.
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Explore how Ponyrider helps service teams manage projects, time and forecasting in one place via the Features page. |
Reference:
[1] The Future of Payments Operations 2025 – Why Legacy Technology Is No Longer Sustainable
[2] Spreadsheet quality assurance: a literature review