Why You Need to Embrace Spreadsheets

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If you’re a regular spreadsheet user, please step away. You understand. You don’t need to be told about any of this. You’re dismissed. Those of you that don’t, we need a chat.

While I completely understand that using spreadsheets outside of a work setting sounds like madness, I’m of the belief that Excel solves everything. Sorry, but it's true. I can't stress enough why spreadsheets are essential for storing data, organising plans and making your life easier.

Bear in mind that I’ve been on this online money-making journey since 2007. There is a distinct difference between how I was operating pre-2012, and once that year started to get into action. The something that separated that year from the ones before was a proper salaried job. Sat in an office. 9-5. Working.

I remember one of the people I was working with asking me: “You know what’s amazing? What I couldn’t do without?” I didn’t have a clue what context this was in until he dropped it: “Excel.” I literally hadn’t touched it between Year 9 of school and this job, so I couldn’t relate. But I soon found that it would be fundamental to everything I’d do from that point.

At first I was using it to organise lists, then create reports, then just to play around with. I was a reformed person. I learned how to different things with YouTube tutorials, then just kept kicking myself at how long I’d taken to realise the benefits.

Pre-spreadsheets, I housed everything in Google Docs. Massive lists in completely unorganised messes. It just wasn’t a pretty sight. Once I’d seen a few different applications of spreadsheets, it made complete sense to them to reform all of the things I was doing at home. First I cleaned up my music collection, then my attention turned to a few of my website projects around the time.

Running a company now, I couldn’t imagine how I could go about anything without spreadsheets as the backbone.

Here’s a handful of ways I use spreadsheets on a daily basis now:

Monthly reports. All of my projects are logged by the month and my reports would be flimsy without Excel
Cost trackers. Cash flow monitors and all the rest wouldn’t be possible without this
Gantt charts. My marketing calendars are on point thanks to Excel
Inventory management. I just wouldn’t without Excel in my life, to be honest
Data storage. Just keeping lists of things I have on my mind and I’ll probably need eventually

If I knew the power of spreadsheets earlier in my journey, I would have used them to:

Track income from get-paid-to websites
Create content
Store guest blog posts in an organised fashion
Create content schedules
Keep track of comping successes

And so much more.

For many, all of this goes without saying. For everyone else, I hope this brings you around to the idea of using Excel more.

It’s really not as complicated as it seems, at first. If you ever get stuck with it, there are so many online resources such as online learning platforms that offer courses on Excel or Google Sheets, you can even take advantage of a free online udemy course that will improve your skills if the budget is of concern! . Excel is great in that it has so much potential – and can be used for such complex things – yet those that just use a fraction of its features can get so much from it.