Can we bring our existing spreadsheet data across?

Yes, items, customers, employees and opening balances import from spreadsheets, which is usually the shortest part of a migration. The longer part is agreeing what the correct opening position actually is.

Can we run both for a while?

Yes, and most businesses do for a month. Keep the spreadsheet as a check rather than as a second system of record, and stop when the two agree twice running. Maintaining both permanently is how you end up unsure which is right.

Will we lose our formulas and reports?

The formulas become rules in the system rather than cells, and the reports are produced from the ledger. What you lose is the ability to change a calculation without anyone knowing, which is the property you were relying on and also the problem.

Our spreadsheet is very customised. Is that a problem?

It is a signal worth reading. Heavy customisation usually encodes a real process, so the useful step is identifying which parts are genuine requirements and which are workarounds for the spreadsheet itself. Most turn out to be the latter.

Compared with Spreadsheets

Q: Can we export back out?

Yes. You can export your data in full, in open formats, at any time, and there is no exit fee.

Most businesses here start on spreadsheets, and for a while that is the correct decision, they are free, flexible, and everyone can already use one. The question is not whether spreadsheets are bad; it is which specific failures start costing more than the software would.

Side by side

What matters	With MjFour	Spreadsheets
Two people working at once	Concurrent by design; each terminal bills independently, including offline.	One editor at a time in practice; copies get emailed and then diverge.
Knowing who changed a figure	Discount overrides, salary adjustments, mark corrections and fee concessions are attributable to a named user.	A cell changes and the previous value is gone.
Enforcing a limit	Credit limits and discount ceilings are enforced at the counter, with overrides authorised and recorded.	A limit is a number in a column that nothing prevents you exceeding.
FBR digital invoicing	Submitted as you bill, with the invoice number and QR on the receipt.	Re-entered into a portal after closing, from a list typed up by hand.
Statutory rules that change	Every statutory item is a dated rule, so historic months keep the rates that were in force when they ran.	Formulas are edited in place, which quietly changes what last year’s payslips say.
Expiry and batches	First-expiry-first-out issue, and expired batches blocked at the counter.	A date column nobody reads during a queue.

When Spreadsheets is the better choice

If you are one person, billing a handful of invoices a month, and no statutory submission depends on the numbers, a spreadsheet is genuinely the cheaper tool, and you should keep using it. The switch pays for itself when a second person needs to work at the same time, or when you have to explain a figure to somebody who was not there.

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In practice

What switching actually involves.

When the spreadsheet actually breaks

Not gradually. There is usually a specific event.

A second person needs to work in it at the same time, so a copy gets emailed, and within a fortnight two versions disagree about the same figure. Or somebody queries a number and the formula that produced it has been edited since, so the answer is no longer recoverable. Or a statutory submission depends on a total that a cell reference quietly broke three months ago.

Until one of those happens, a spreadsheet is genuinely the cheaper tool. We are not going to pretend otherwise.

The cost nobody counts

Reconciliation. A shop running a billing spreadsheet and a stock register spends time every month making them agree, and that time does not appear on any invoice, which is exactly why it is invisible when comparing costs.

Add up the hours somebody spends chasing a difference between what was sold and what is on the shelf, and the comparison usually settles itself.

What migrating actually involves

Items, customers, employees and opening balances import from spreadsheets, which is the easy part and normally an afternoon. The hard part is agreeing what the correct opening position is, because that is a question about your business rather than about data.

Schools and shops both tend to discover during this step that two of their records disagree and always have. Finding that is uncomfortable and it is the point.

What you keep from the spreadsheet habit

The ability to leave. You can export your data in full, in open formats, at any time, and there is no exit fee. A spreadsheet's real advantage is that nobody owns it but you, and we would rather match that than argue against it.

What you are actually buying

Not calculation. Spreadsheets calculate perfectly well. You are buying concurrency, an audit trail, limits that are enforced rather than recorded, submission that happens at the point of sale, and statutory rules that are dated so last year stays true when a rate changes.

Terms

Terms used on this page

Plain definitions of the words a buyer here actually searches for.

Audit trail: A record of who changed what and when, which a spreadsheet cell cannot provide because its previous value is gone once it is overwritten.
Concurrency: More than one person working on the same records at the same time without copies being made, which is where spreadsheet workflows usually diverge.
Opening position: The agreed balances of stock, receivables and fees as at the day you start, which is the genuinely difficult part of any migration.
Enforced limit: A ceiling the software prevents you exceeding, as opposed to a number in a column that records the breach after it happened.

Questions people ask before they buy

Twenty minutes, your own data, no slides.

Bring a month of your own sales, a payslip you argue about, or last term’s fee sheet. We will show you what it looks like in MjFour.

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