Keeping the spreadsheets in an SME: what doing nothing costs

Every business has them: the list of open orders, the timesheet, the sheet where someone gathers the figures from three systems every Monday. They work, or they would not exist. And you are in good company: in a survey by AXA and Sotomo of 300 Swiss SMEs in March 2025, 29 per cent did not use AI at all yet.

This article belongs to our series of comparisons: the same six questions, this time for the way without a new tool. We read the information on 14 October 2026; the sources are listed at the end.

What you use today

Excel comes with Microsoft 365. Business Basic at CHF 5.67 per person per month brings Excel in the browser and on the phone, Business Standard at CHF 11.34 the desktop version too, both on an annual plan and excluding VAT. Google Sheets comes with every Google Workspace plan, from CHF 7.– per person. For five people on Business Standard that is CHF 56.70 a month, and you pay it anyway.

Where spreadsheets are strong

A spreadsheet is the most flexible tool in the office. Everyone understands it, everyone can change it, and a new column takes five minutes. Excel uses Power Query to pull data from files, databases and the web and refreshes it at the press of a button. Office Scripts record steps and play them back, from a button or in a Power Automate flow. In Google Sheets, Apps Script does the same, and AppSheet turns a sheet into a small app, on every Workspace plan.

If the file lives in OneDrive, SharePoint or Google Drive, several people work on it at once, and earlier versions can be restored. For many routines in a small business that is enough, and it costs nothing extra. Anyone good with formulas can build a surprising amount with it.

Where spreadsheets stop

• Errors are the rule. In 2015, Raymond Panko summed up the research on spreadsheet errors. In 85 thoroughly inspected spreadsheets from day-to-day business, 94 per cent contained errors. And whoever checks finds about 60 per cent of them on average, experience or not.
• The file does not know what is current. Working on a workbook together in Excel needs the file to be in OneDrive or SharePoint. If someone opens it in a version that cannot co-author, it is locked for the others, and according to Microsoft the last saved change generally overwrites earlier ones. A copy sent as an attachment lives a life of its own anyway.
• Whoever has the file has everything. In 2024, the UK Information Commissioner proposed a fine of GBP 750,000 because a hidden worksheet from the Police Service of Northern Ireland had exposed the personal data of all 9,483 of its officers and staff. Whoever may read a spreadsheet reads everything in it.
• The time disappears quietly. Typing, copying and reconciling appear on no invoice. As in our cost article, we calculate with internal costs of CHF 90.– an hour; the Federal Statistical Office gives pure labour costs of CHF 63.62 per hour worked for 2020, without workplace and administration. One hour a week per person thus costs about CHF 1'950.– a month for five people.

Your spreadsheets connected to our platform

The first way leaves the spreadsheets where they are and takes the manual work off them. The Jules Solutions Platform reads and writes your spreadsheets in OneDrive, SharePoint or Google Drive, to the agreed extent. It reads invoices and delivery notes and enters the details in the right row, reconciles two lists and reports what does not match. If it cannot read a receipt reliably, the workflow (A workflow specifies what information goes in, what happens to it and who checks the result.) hands it to a person instead of guessing.

Every entry is in the log (A log records what a program or an AI agent did and when, so that afterwards you can trace who triggered what and what happened.), with the state before and after. The platform sends a message to the outside world or a payment only once a person has decided. Your people keep working in Excel or Sheets; they just type less.

For five people: Operator System (Operator System is our package for teams at CHF 3'500.– to 5'000.–: the shared base with workflows for the team and connected systems.) as the shared base, CHF 3'500.– to 5'000.– once, with six months of Business seat (The Business seat is one person’s access to our platform (open alpha); Pro Setup includes three months, and with Operator System it is six per person.) per person; then CHF 199.– per person per month, or CHF 169.– billed yearly. At CHF 90.– an hour, the five seats at CHF 995.– a month equal eleven hours by calculation, or about half an hour per person per week.

The whole system

In the whole system, the spreadsheet that carries a routine today becomes a workflow with instructions as a file: in one person’s vault (The vault is a folder of your working files on your computer; we create it from the vault template.) or in the shared project repository (A Git repository is storage for files that records every change with its date and author; GitHub is a well-known service for it.), with versions and someone who accepts changes. Each person has a vault, organised by PARA (PARA organises storage into four parts: projects, areas, resources and archives.) and readable in Obsidian (Obsidian is a note-taking program that shows a folder of text files on your computer as linked notes.), and starts workflows with three to five commands (A command starts a defined workflow. In Pro Setup, we set up three to five commands for your work.), without writing a prompt (A prompt is the input to a language model: the question, instruction or template the AI responds to.). An AI harness (An AI harness is the workspace on your computer in which AI reads files and carries out agreed steps.) works in it; we recommend Claude Code (Claude Code is an AI harness made by Anthropic: it runs on your computer, reads files and carries out steps you describe in plain language.).

The spreadsheet can stay, as a view for everyone who likes it; the quote sets out where the data behind it lives. Workflows file receipts by the same rule in your folders. That helps, because you keep business books and accounting vouchers for ten years, electronically only if they can be made readable at any time. Workflows run on your device, on a computer in the office, on our platform or with a cloud provider (The cloud means computers in a provider’s data centres on which programs run and data is kept, instead of on your own device.), as the quote sets out.

The platform runs on our own infrastructure in Switzerland and is in open alpha (Open alpha means the platform is at an early stage: we use it ourselves, and it changes all the time.); we run our own company on it. For five people: Operator System plus one Pro Setup (Pro Setup is our recommended package at CHF 1'490.–: vault, workflows with AI agents, first integrations, an introduction session and three months of Business seat.) per person, CHF 10'950.– to 12'450.– once, with 60 days of follow-up support (Follow-up support means that questions and adjustments by email and phone are included for 30 days (Pro Setup) or 60 days (Operator System) after handover.), then the Business seats and model usage (Model usage means accessing an AI provider’s language model. The cost is not included in the setup price.).

Our verdict

For a lot of things, the spreadsheet is the right answer. If one person maintains a list, it rarely changes and it makes work for nobody, leave it as it is. Then doing nothing really costs nothing.

It gets expensive when people carry figures from one place to another every week and nobody knows any more which version is current. Do the sum: if the first way saves each person half an hour a week, the Business seats are paid for at CHF 90.– an hour. The whole system pays off when a spreadsheet is the backbone of a routine today and depends on one person.

Where the time goes today, you can find out with ‘Where does the time go?’.