Turn an Excel Workbook Into a Multi-User Web Application

Yes. An Excel workbook that runs part of your business can be rebuilt as a web application that many people use at once. The data moves into a database, the formulas become business rules the system enforces, and the worksheets become screens and reports. Nothing is converted by pushing a button: the workbook is treated as the specification for a proper application.

Signs this is your problem

• The workbook has grown tabs, macros and colour codes that only its author understands.
• People take turns opening it, or work in copies and merge them by hand.
• It is emailed to customers or field staff and comes back in different shapes.
• It holds information some users should not be able to see.
• It has become slow or has started to crash.

What carries over and what gets rebuilt

• Your data moves into a SQL Server database, cleaned up and with duplicates removed.
• Your formulas become calculations and rules the application runs the same way every time. Nobody can overwrite them by accident.
• Your worksheets become entry screens, lists and reports designed for the people who use them.
• Your macros and VBA are rewritten as part of the application. They are read carefully first, because that is often where the real business logic hides.
• Your lookups and drop-downs become managed lists that authorized staff can maintain themselves.

What you gain that Excel cannot give you

• Many people working at the same time without locking each other out.
• Each person seeing only what their role allows.
• A record of who changed what and when.
• Entries checked as they are typed, with required fields and valid ranges.
• Access from any browser, including a phone, with no file to send around.
• Approvals, reminders and notifications built into the process.

You can still export to Excel whenever you want to analyze the numbers.

Why a straight conversion tool is rarely the answer

There are products that put a web face on a spreadsheet. They keep the spreadsheet’s weaknesses, because underneath it is still a grid of cells with no real structure. If the workbook matters enough to convert, it matters enough to give it a proper database, which is what makes the result fast, reliable and able to grow.

How Keene Systems handles it

1. We read the workbook with the person who built it. Every tab, formula and macro is there for a reason. We find the reason before we design anything.
2. We design the database. A sound data model is what lets the application answer questions the spreadsheet never could.
3. We build the screens and rules in short cycles. You try each piece as it is finished.
4. We import the live data and run both side by side. The numbers are compared until they match, then the workbook is retired.

The next step is a short, no-pressure conversation. Book a call with Lance Keene or use the form on this page.