Sheet-Pay: When Spreadsheets Become a Bottleneck
Most businesses start with spreadsheets for expense tracking. It works until it doesn't. Here's the pattern we see and what to do about it.
The Spreadsheet Trap
A social enterprise was managing CSR project expenses across multiple programs. They had spreadsheets. Lots of them. Each project manager maintained their own. The finance team consolidated manually every month.
It worked when they had 3 projects. Then they grew to 15.
What Was Breaking
No Single Source of Truth
Each project had its own spreadsheet. Finance spent 2 days/month just consolidating.
Approval Chaos
Expenses emailed back and forth. "Did you approve this?" conversations daily.
Missing Documentation
Invoices attached to emails. Some lost. Audit prep was a nightmare.
No Audit Trail
Who approved what, when? Nobody knew without digging through email threads.
What We Built
Sheet-Pay was a simple web application that replaced the spreadsheet chaos with a structured workflow. Not fancy. Just functional.
The Expense Flow
* Statuses are configurable per organisation
Core Features
Under the Hood
Simple doesn't mean sloppy. The system was built with proper architecture:
The Result
Signs You've Outgrown Spreadsheets
- More than 5 people need to access/update expense data
- You spend hours consolidating data from multiple sheets
- Approval workflows happen over email
- Finding a specific invoice requires digging through folders
- Audit prep takes more than a day
- You've had duplicate payments or missed approvals
If you ticked 3 or more, a structured system will save you time and headaches.
Need an Expense Workflow System?
We build custom expense and approval workflows for Australian businesses. Simple interfaces, proper audit trails, no bloat.
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