u/Important_Fail_4705

Spreadsheets are surprisingly useful when a store is small. You can track stock, orders and suppliers without paying for another system.

The problem seems to appear when the number of products and sales channels keeps growing. A stock figure can change several times before someone gets around to updating the sheet, and one missed update can create a bigger problem later.

I think the real question is not whether spreadsheets are bad, it is when the business becomes too active for manual updates to stay reliable.

For people who have already moved away from spreadsheets, what finally made you switch? Was it overselling, order volume, multiple marketplaces or simply spending too much time maintaining the sheet?

Spreadsheets can work surprisingly well when the business is small.

The problem starts when stock changes throughout the day and several storefronts are taking orders from the same inventory.

A manual update might only take a minute but repeating that process all day creates another problem. Someone eventually forgets one update and the numbers stop matching.

There is also the question of whether replacing a spreadsheet with software actually makes things simpler or just adds another system to maintain.

For people who have made that switch, what finally convinced you that the spreadsheet was no longer enough?