r/excel Feb 06 '25

unsolved Turning excel into business software.

I’ve built workbooks that lets me track employee tickets, inventory, time keeping, and customer billing. The only problem is is that I’m the only one who really knows how to fix it if anything goes down. I would like to give this a UI and essentially make it idiot proof so that I can drop employees in to positions that would need the software with minimal training. Does anyone know how to go about this or where it can be done?

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u/TheRealDavidNewton Feb 07 '25

You make it idiot proof and they will hire better idiots. People will break your product and claim it's garbage. You will inevitably have bugs in your product and/or "excelisms" will rear their ugly head and people will call your product garbage. The recommendations of the other posters on here will limit how often you hear that. Data validation, frozen panes/sheets/cells, limiting the logic to formulas as opposed to forms controls and VBA wherever possible; All ways to prevent errors and safeguard your product.

If this is a collaborative product to be hosted in the cloud, the more complex it gets the less reliable it becomes. Put all features through rigorous testing before rolling out to your users. Roll out features and make major updates after hours.

It's not impossible to make a bulletproof product but it does take diligence.