Have you ever opened a spreadsheet and realised the business would struggle if the person who built it disappeared tomorrow?
Most growing businesses have at least one. It started as somebody being helpful — a quick way to track stock, or a tab to reconcile payments before month-end. It worked, so it stayed. Then it collected columns, formulas and a small ritual of steps that only one person fully understands.
"The spreadsheet isn't always the problem. It's what everyone has to do around it."
The part I pay attention to
The warning sign isn't that a spreadsheet exists. It's when people spend more time checking versions, chasing updates and fixing mistakes than doing the actual work. That's the moment the file stopped being a tool and became a dependency.
What I'd do before replacing anything
Read the spreadsheet properly. Where does each column come from? Who needs the output next, and in what form? Which steps only exist because two systems don't talk to each other? Often two of those steps carry most of the cost — and fixing those two is a far smaller job than replacing the file.
Understand what the spreadsheet is doing before you decide it's the problem.