comparison · spreadsheets

Ovirno vs staying in spreadsheets

Stay in spreadsheets for as long as one person can hold the business in their head. A sheet is free, infinitely flexible, needs nobody's permission and is understood by everyone you will ever hire — and for a single-location business with one person entering the numbers, it is frequently the correct answer. It stops being enough at a specific point: when the numbers have to be current for more than one person, or when nobody notices a change until the month is over.

The honest test is not size. It is this: in the last three months, did you find something in the numbers late, and did finding it late cost more than a year of software?

Show the detail

Side by side

optionspreadsheetsoptionOvirno

CostspreadsheetsFree, or included in something you already pay for.OvirnoFrom €99 a month for the organisation.

FlexibilityspreadsheetsTotal. Any column, any formula, any layout, changed in seconds by anybody.OvirnoFixed structure. You get our objects, not your own — the price of everything computing itself.

Who can use itspreadsheetsEveryone. No training, no onboarding, no explaining.OvirnoAnyone who can use a phone, but it is still a new thing to learn.

Staying currentspreadsheetsOnly as current as the last person who remembered to update it.OvirnoOrders arrive by webhook in seconds; sheets, CSV and statements on a schedule.

History and auditspreadsheetsVersion history exists but nobody reads it. Two people editing one row is a coin toss.OvirnoEvery record keeps where it came from; a feed records who changed what and when.

Noticing thingsspreadsheetsNothing. A sheet has never once told anybody anything.OvirnoHourly detectors, thresholds in your own words, alerts and a Monday letter.

Asking a questionspreadsheetsBuild the pivot. Ten minutes if you are good at it.OvirnoAsk out loud; the answer is computed while you wait and says how it was counted.

Getting your data backspreadsheetsIt is already yours, in a file.OvirnoOne button exports everything as CSV, with a list of what is not in the archive.

Failure modespreadsheetsA dragged formula, a wrong total, and nobody can say when it started.OvirnoA vendor with one engineer. If that engineer is unavailable, you have your CSVs and a problem.

Where spreadsheets is stronger

For a business turning over a few thousand a month, €99 is a real number. If the sheet is working and nobody is losing sleep, the correct decision is to keep the sheet and spend the money on the thing that actually limits you.

Any structure you can imagine, this afternoon, without asking anyone. Every system, ours included, forces its own model onto your business, and there is always something you did in a sheet in ten seconds that a system will not do at all.

Zero onboarding. The bookkeeper, the new hire, the accountant, your bank — all of them can open a spreadsheet. That is a genuine advantage and it is the reason most small businesses are still running on one, correctly.

Where Ovirno is stronger

This is the whole difference. Everything a spreadsheet knows, it knows silently, and it will wait years for you to ask. Every metric here is put against its own four-week normal every hour, and the thresholds you write in your own words produce a message on your phone while the day can still be changed.

Orders arrive by themselves. That single property removes the most common failure of spreadsheet businesses, which is not error — it is that the sheet is four days stale during precisely the week that mattered.

Once more than one person needs to act on the numbers, a spreadsheet becomes a negotiation about which copy is right. That negotiation has a cost, and it is usually paid in the evening.

Which to choose

Stay in spreadsheets if one person enters and reads the numbers, the business fits in that person's head, and nothing has been discovered late enough to hurt. Do not let anyone — including us — tell you that this is unprofessional. It is often just correct.

Move when the sheet is regularly stale, when two or more people need the same current number, or when something drifted for a month before anyone saw it. That last one is the expensive symptom, and it is the one software actually fixes.

Either way, your history comes with you: CSV and Excel are imported with the columns proposed for you, and repeat rows do not double.

If this sounds like your situation, the way to find out is not a demo of somebody else's data: send one export of your sales and thirty minutes later you are looking at your own business, with observations computed from your own numbers. Ask for that, or write on Telegram — the person who answers is the one who builds the thing.

Asked before every one of these

Is a spreadsheet enough to run a small business?

Often, yes — while one person enters and reads the numbers and the business fits in their head. It stops being enough when the sheet is regularly stale or when more than one person needs the same current number.

What do I lose by moving off spreadsheets?

Flexibility. A system imposes its own structure, and there will be something you did in a sheet in ten seconds that it will not do at all. What you gain is that the numbers stay current and something watches them.

Can I import my existing spreadsheets?

Yes. CSV and Excel are parsed with the columns proposed for you, the mapping is remembered, and repeat rows are deduplicated by hash so a re-import does not double anything.