The Most Expensive Spreadsheet You’ve Ever Seen

At first glance, it looks harmless. It might even look organised. Rows neatly labelled with asset types, test dates, colour-coded compliance statuses, perhaps a tab for each school. You open it and think, “Yes. We’re on top of things.”

Until you’re not.

Across schools and trusts, spreadsheets still quietly run the show when it comes to tracking statutory compliance, planned maintenance, and capital projects. They live on shared drives, tucked away in folders with names like “Building Stuff” or “Estates MASTER final FINAL V4.2”. They work well enough. Until they don’t.

“They rely on me,” the spreadsheet thinks. “I’ve been here longer than most of the staff.”

“I remember the first entry: ‘Replace taps - Year 4 boys’ toilets back in 2013. Just me and a few rows. Now look at me—17 tabs, 47 columns, colour-coded within an inch of my life. I've even got a pivot table no one touches, just in case it breaks.”

“I don’t judge them. They’re busy. They mean well. Someone types ‘done’ and shades a cell green—sometimes even in the right row. It’s fine. I trust them, even if they can’t always remember who last edited me.”

“I sit quietly on the shared drive. Always ready. Always open. I rarely crash—until someone adds a drop-down menu with a conditional format that spirals into a logic loop. But we don’t talk about that.”

“I see everything. That fire alarm test marked as complete but missing its certificate. The emergency lighting entry copied from last year (and the year before). The boiler service that nearly made it onto my cells—before someone got distracted by a burst pipe and clicked ‘Save As’ instead.”

“Oh, the versions. FINAL_v1. FINAL_FINAL. FINAL_FINAL_USE_THIS_ONE_NOT_THAT_ONE_FINAL. I live in all of them. Which one is real? Depends who you ask. I’ve stopped trying to keep track.”

“I get coloured green a lot. People like green. It feels reassuring. Like a big tick in a big box. But sometimes I wonder if they remember why they made me green in the first place.”

“Someone once called me ‘The System’! Ha. Technically, yes—I can track changes, if someone remembers to switch it on and resists the temptation to immediately click 'Enable Editing' and hope for the best.”

“Let’s be honest, though. Everyone’s doing ten things at once. If someone forgets to save or hits 'undo' one too many times, I politely erase all trace of what might’ve been there. I do my best, really—I’m only as accurate as the five minutes someone had between lunch duty and a heating contractor turning up unannounced.”

“If someone deletes a row without noticing? It’s gone. No questions asked. Probably forever. Unless they printed it last term and remember where they filed it. Which... they don’t.”

“I’m loyal, though. Always there. Blinking patiently from cell B27 when audit day arrives. If I’m incomplete, they’ll print me anyway. Staple me to a policy. Hope no one looks too closely.”

“I’m not malicious. I don’t mean to cause problems. I’m just… not enough.”

“I wish I could send them a meaningful reminder. Flag a conflict. Nudge someone that a certificate is missing.”

“But I can’t.”

“I’m just a spreadsheet.”

It’s not that spreadsheets are bad. They’ve kept schools ticking over for years. But as trusts grow, expectations rise, and compliance becomes more complex, the cracks begin to show.

So no—you probably haven’t been charged a penny for that spreadsheet.

But make no mistake.

It’s probably the most expensive spreadsheet you've ever seen.

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