Spreadsheet or CRM: when is it time to move?

Four signs it's getting tight

Recognise two of these and you're probably already losing work to your own admin.

1. You're no longer the only one in the file. Two people in one spreadsheet means two versions, and the correct one is always the one you don't have open. A shared folder doesn't fix that; it just moves the problem to whoever saved last.
2. You forget to ring people back. A spreadsheet reminds you of nothing. As soon as you're making promises that land weeks or months out, you need something that raises its hand on the day.
3. You can't find what was said. One cell reading “called” is not a history. The moment you ring a customer you last spoke to four months ago and open with “where did we get to?”, they can hear it.
4. Your sale has more than one step. A quote that has to go past their buyer, a site visit, a trial order — a spreadsheet holds no sequence, so you can't see where anything stands without reading the whole list.

Three reasons to stay put

You work alone with fewer than fifty relationships. Then a CRM is a fix for a problem you don't have. Put a reminder in your calendar and you're done.

You sell in one conversation. If you quote and deliver on the spot, there are no stages to track. A list of names and an invoicing tool covers it.

You've just started. The first months are about finding customers, not recording them. Setting up a system before there's anything to put in it is mostly just work.

What moving actually costs

The common miscalculation isn't money, it's attention. A CRM costs a few tens of pounds a month. The real risk is that nobody keeps it current and in three months you're running two systems instead of one.

Which is why the deciding question is not what a package can do, but whether you'll keep it up at a quarter past four on a Tuesday afternoon.

There's a pattern in the national figures that points the same way. In 2023, 61% of UK firms used specialised software and 69% used cloud-based systems, so buying software is ordinary rather than a milestone. But among firms scoring in the top tenth for management practices — things like setting targets, tracking a handful of numbers and reviewing them regularly — 88% had taken up at least one of the technologies surveyed, against 51% in the bottom tenth. The habit comes first and the tool follows it. A tool on its own doesn't produce the habit.

Don't take your mess with you

If you do move, the temptation is to import the whole spreadsheet. Don't, not in one go. That file is full of companies that have closed, contacts who work somewhere else now, and addresses from three moves ago.

Put in what's actually live — usually ten to forty rows — and add the rest as you speak to people again. Then your records are true from day one, which is worth more than being complete.

A middle road that's often enough

If you're unsure, this is the cheapest experiment available: keep the spreadsheet, add two columns — *next step* and *when* — and fill them in for four weeks without exception.

If that works, you've solved your problem without buying anything. If it doesn't, you now know exactly what you need and why: not somewhere to store more, but something that reminds you — and seven questions are enough to pick one.

Either outcome is useful, and both beat a six-week comparison of packages you haven't tried.