How Much Does It Really Cost to Work with Spreadsheets? The Hidden Costs We Often Overlook

Spreadsheets are among the most widely used tools in everyday business operations. They are readily available, flexible and require little investment to get started. They make it easy to collect data, create summaries, perform calculations and keep track of different areas of a business.

However, as a company grows, spreadsheets gradually take on more and more responsibilities. New reports, dependencies and maintenance tasks begin to appear. These changes happen incrementally, making it easy to get used to the additional workload without noticing how much time and effort it takes to maintain the existing way of working.

It is therefore worth taking a step back and looking at how much working with spreadsheets actually costs. The cost is not limited to software licences. More importantly, it includes the time employees spend managing spreadsheets — time that can be translated into real business costs.

The cost of a spreadsheet goes beyond its subscription price

Using spreadsheets can seem almost cost-free. Basic tools are available for free, while more advanced office software packages usually account for only a small part of a company's overall expenses.

However, software costs are only one part of the total picture. Everyday work with spreadsheets also involves numerous additional tasks that take up employees' time and generate costs, even if those costs are not immediately obvious. Let's look at some of the areas where they most commonly arise.

Creating formulas and reports

A spreadsheet intended for more than simply storing data needs to be properly designed. Its structure must be planned, dependencies defined, and formulas, functions and calculation rules created.

More advanced spreadsheets may require additional features, such as automatic summaries, filtering, data lookup, pivot tables and other mechanisms designed to make everyday work easier.

Creating such a file can take several hours or considerably longer. And the work does not end there. As business processes change, new fields may need to be added, formulas modified and existing calculations checked to make sure that updates have not affected other parts of the spreadsheet.

This type of work often goes unnoticed because it is carried out alongside employees' regular responsibilities.

Manually entering and transferring data

Information needed for various reports and records often comes from multiple sources: emails, forms, documents or other systems used within the company.

An employee has to find the required information, enter it into the appropriate cells, check that it is correct and make sure it follows the right format.

Sometimes the same data needs to be entered several times — into different spreadsheets or reports. This may be due to the lack of automated data flows or simply the way work has been organised.

Each individual task takes only a moment, but when repeated a dozen or several dozen times a day, the costs start to add up.

Finding information and preparing reports

The cost of working with spreadsheets is not limited to entering data. It also includes searching for, comparing and organising information, as well as preparing reports.

An employee may need to check an order's history, find information about a particular complaint or prepare a summary for a selected period.

If the data is spread across several files or worksheets, it has to be located, combined and filtered accordingly. Even a seemingly simple report may require several additional steps.

Preparing recurring reports can be particularly time-consuming, as it often involves updating the data, checking its accuracy and formatting the results every time.

Checking data and correcting errors

The lack of proper validation for manually entered data increases the risk of mistakes. These may include an incorrect amount, an invalid date, a value entered in the wrong cell, a missing record or an accidentally overwritten formula.

The scale of the problem may be greater than expected. One study found errors in 94% of the operational spreadsheets examined.¹

Not every error is detected immediately. Sometimes incorrect data makes its way into subsequent reports, resulting in incorrectly calculated bonuses, inaccurate profit margins or underestimated orders.

When an inconsistency is discovered, its source still needs to be identified. This means checking the original data again, comparing it with spreadsheet records and tracing the dependencies between different elements of the report.

Verifying data accuracy also often requires employees to get involved manually. In a survey of 180 spreadsheet users at the multinational company ABB, as many as 87% of respondents reported checking individual cells or using a calculator to verify selected values.²

Tracking deadlines and keeping tasks on schedule

Spreadsheets can also be used to record deadlines, task statuses, payment dates and successive stages of order fulfilment.

The problem arises when simply recording the information is not enough. Someone still has to regularly check upcoming deadlines, identify tasks that require attention and make sure that all records are up to date.

Unlike systems equipped with notification features, a standard spreadsheet will not automatically remind someone about an approaching deadline or notify the right person that action is required.

In practice, this means manually reviewing records and sometimes contacting other employees to follow up.

If something is overlooked, the consequences can be much more significant than a few extra minutes of work. A delayed payment, an unresolved complaint or a missed deadline can lead to additional costs and complications.

How much time does working with spreadsheets take? An example of a small online shop

Let's consider a small company running an online store. It uses several spreadsheets in its daily operations to record sales, track working hours and manage complaints and returns.

These are relatively straightforward processes, and each of them can be managed using spreadsheets. But how much time does their day-to-day maintenance actually take?

1. Sales and order register

The store handles an average of 20 orders per day. Sales data is recorded in a spreadsheet that combines information from the online store with purchase costs and profit margins, and is also used to prepare reports.

The employee spends time on:

• Adding new orders to the register — an average of 1.5 minutes per order, or around 30 minutes per day.

• Checking entries and resolving discrepancies — around 10 minutes per day.

• Preparing a monthly sales report — around 1 hour per month.

Total: approximately 15 hours and 40 minutes per month.

2. Working time records

The company employs five people. Employees record their working hours, while one person is responsible for checking entries, accounting for absences and preparing monthly summaries.

The work includes:

• Collecting and updating working time information — around 10 minutes per day.

• Checking entries and resolving missing information — around 30 minutes per week.

• Preparing a monthly summary — around 1 hour.

Total: approximately 6 hours and 50 minutes per month.

3. Complaints and returns register

The store receives an average of 30 complaints and return requests per month. These are submitted by email or through a contact form. An employee maintains a spreadsheet containing order details, the type of request, date, status and resolution.

The work includes:

• Adding new requests and entering their details — around 3 minutes per request.

• Updating statuses and recording information about how each case is handled — around 2 minutes per request.

• Searching for previous requests, checking deadlines and verifying information — around 2 hours per month.

• Preparing a complaints and returns summary — around 45 minutes per month.

Total: approximately 5 hours and 15 minutes per month.

The times above cover maintaining and updating the register, not the actual handling of complaints or processing of returns.

What do three spreadsheets really cost?

In each of these areas, employees perform a number of repetitive tasks. None of them seems particularly time-consuming on its own, but together they add up to a significant amount of work.

This means that almost 28 hours every month are spent simply maintaining these three spreadsheets. Over the course of a year, that adds up to approximately 333 hours — equivalent to more than 41 eight-hour working days, or over eight working weeks for one person.

Assuming an employee earns PLN 6,000 net per month, the estimated total cost to the employer is approximately PLN 10,000. With around 160 working hours per month, this translates into an hourly employment cost of approximately PLN 62.50. The time spent maintaining these three registers therefore costs the company around PLN 1,735 per month, or more than PLN 20,800 per year.

It is worth emphasising that this is a simplified example. It does not include all the work involved in creating and developing spreadsheets, building formulas, updating dependencies or resolving more complex issues. Nor does it account for potential losses resulting from missed deadlines or decisions made using outdated information.

Summary

Spreadsheets are useful and versatile tools. They work particularly well for simple reports, small datasets, basic calculations and tasks that do not require complex information flows between multiple people and systems.

However, as a company grows and the number of tasks it handles increases, the cost of maintaining these processes can rise significantly — often without anyone noticing.

That is why it is worth reviewing how individual processes are carried out from time to time and assessing how much time their day-to-day management actually takes. Not to abandon spreadsheets at all costs, but to make an informed decision about whether they are still the right tool for a particular task.

Want to find out how much maintaining your business processes really costs? Get in touch. We can help you estimate the time and associated costs, analyse your current way of working and assess whether there is a more efficient way to handle these tasks.

¹ S. G. Powell, K. R. Baker, B. Lawson, Errors in Operational Spreadsheets, 2009. The study examined 50 operational spreadsheets and detected errors in 47 of them (94%).

² J. Smith, J. A. Middleton, N. A. Kraft, Spreadsheet Practices and Challenges in a Large Multinational Conglomerate, IEEE VL/HCC 2017, pp. 155–163. Survey of 180 spreadsheet users at ABB.