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December 5th 2023

Gifts for the business that runs on spreadsheets

Spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel are a great platform for running a business – a versatile and general tool. With the know-how you can get what you need to done. But there are several ways you can make your life easier through digital transformation – check them out in this gift guide.

Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow is a brilliant resource for learning more in-depth technical abilities. Be that coding, using Photoshop or the subject of this article, Microsoft Excel. Stack Overflow is a forum where someone has more than likely encountered your issue before and the community came to their help.

Need to automate some simple tasks? Stack Overflow can help set up macros. Unsure how to get that formula working? Stack Overflow can lead you to the light.

Training courses

If you’re running your entire business on Excel, or a similar spreadsheet. So invoicing, payroll and even leads, it couldn’t be more vital that every single one of your staff members knows how to use the software. One incorrect keystroke and the price can be high.

It’s obvious, but everyone says they can use Excel. But by that, they usually mean they can do data entry. However, there’s using Excel and using Excel. The latter of which means running formulas, linking different sheets together and automating tasks with the use of Macros.

You can find a range of courses online and even certified programs from Microsoft themselves. Your local Chamber of Commerce will likely offer a suitable training course at beginner and even advanced levels. Getting yourself on one of these can be an invaluable way of improving your business before moving onto more advanced platforms tailored with your work in mind.

A method of digitising expenses

There are a range of different applications to streamline the management of expenses. Effectively eliminating the need to hand over your receipts and write up expenses. Two tools that help with the management of this are Pleo and Spendesk. Monitoring your employee’s expenses these tools aid in the acceleration of your approval process.

Online portals for external contractors

If your contractors and vendors get in touch with you via email, investing in setting up a portal to contact yourself is pretty easy.

With all the information you need provided and in the same format, so your team don’t need to waste time looking for different pieces of information. A marginal gain that adds up over time, speeding up your department at every turn and paying for itself with major gains.

Effectively portals like this are web-hosted contact forms that format your teams’ communications with external bodies, accelerating their work and unifying team processes.

Related: Centralise your company’s data processes to grow your business

A Sage or Quickbooks account

There are a range of off-the-shelf software solutions that offer companies much improved financial reporting as well as accelerated invoicing and payroll tools.

These include Sage, Quickbooks and Zoho, each has its own benefits and drawbacks, the team at Shoothill can guide you towards the appropriate solution for your business. Working in advisory roles as a part of our business consulting service we’ve implemented this and custom tools to achieve unique results for businesses again and again.

A selection of snacks and a stress ball

You’ll need some snacks when doing data entry and checking against paper records for hours at a time. Rod, our Managing Director, recommends Black Jacks and mini Diam Bars.

We also recommend a stress ball, because if you’re running your business on a spreadsheet, you’ll need it. As with all things in life – preparation is key.

An hour with Shoothill

While not every business is ready to undergo a bespoke digital transformation, we’ve found it’s not the best path forward for everyone. There is other work and paths to consider before taking this step.

Specialists in the creative application of technology we know how to accelerate and automate business processes – letting your team do their jobs and scale your business. Say perhaps your team spend one afternoon a month manually creating invoices or generating reports for an end-of-month meeting by meticulously copy and pasting information.

Developing a platform that holds all this data, not only eliminates errors but also means you can get these monotonous tasks done at the click of a button.

In an hour with our team, you can find out what ways your company can look to grow without eating into your snack budget – all by drawing on innovations from our extensive previous project archive.

Looking for help in scaling your enterprise but not sure where to start? Get in touch with us here.

Related: Legacy software: Is it time to upgrade your software system?