CRM in Excel: when does it still work and when does it stop?

On the desktop of almost every small agency sits an Excel file with columns for company name, contact person, last contact and status. That is the CRM. And for a share of the agencies and freelancers reading this, it currently works fine. The articles you find when you search for "CRM in Excel" almost all jump to the conclusion that you should buy software within two paragraphs. That is too fast, and it is usually written by someone who sells that software.

A CRM in Excel is a spreadsheet where you track clients, contact moments and open deals in rows and columns, with no software underneath that flags what needs to happen. The short answer to whether that works: yes, as long as you are the only one maintaining it and you still hold the overview in your head. It fails at a point that is fairly predictable, and that point has little to do with the number of rows.

When is a CRM in Excel still fine?

In three situations a spreadsheet is simply the right call:

• You work alone and handle all follow-up yourself. Nobody else needs to be in the file.
• You have few open deals at a time, and you know off the top of your head what you promised to which client.
• You sell little new work, because your biggest clients have been with you for years. Then your CRM is really a client list, not a sales instrument.

If that is your situation, a CRM package mostly costs you setup time and delivers little. Excel is free, you already know it, and you can make the columns exactly the way you think. Those are real advantages, and most comparisons wave them away.

Where does an Excel CRM break down with multiple clients?

The tipping point is not a number of rows, but the moment the spreadsheet has to do something a spreadsheet cannot: tell you something on its own.

An Excel file never tells you the proposal for Hokuspokus B.V. has been sitting untouched for eleven days. It does not tell you that Sjef promised to call back this week. It remembers what you put in, and nothing more. As long as you scroll through the file daily, that goes fine. The moment it is a busy week and you skip it once, work disappears without anyone noticing.

On top of that come three things specific to agencies and freelancers serving multiple clients at once:

• Two people at the same time. As soon as someone else views or edits, versions appear. A shared cloud copy solves the conflict, but not the question of who touched which row last and why.
• The gap after a deal is won. In the spreadsheet you set the status to won, and then the real work starts in another tool. Everything you agreed during the sales process stays behind in the "notes" column. I described that handoff earlier in from won deal to client project.
• The question you cannot answer. How much revenue is in the pipeline right now, and which clients are stalled? Excel can do that, but only if someone has the discipline every week to keep the columns accurate.

That last point is the honest core. An Excel CRM works exactly as well as the discipline of the person maintaining it. Software takes over part of that discipline. No more than that, and anyone promising you otherwise is overselling.

What happens to your Excel data when you switch?

This is the question comparison articles consistently skip, and it is the question people actually get stuck on.

The good news: virtually every CRM system imports a CSV file, and Excel exports one in two clicks. The less good news: your import is only as clean as your file. If the "status" column contains "proposal out", "proposal sent" and "waiting on Bep" all at once, you simply carry that mess into the new system.

So before switching, set aside an hour to clean up your columns before you export. One column per type of information, one fixed set of statuses, no merged cells. That hour saves you more later than any feature in the new system.

When is a CRM system actually worth it?

The line I see in practice: the moment you catch yourself asking "what did I promise that client again", and the answer is not in the spreadsheet. Or the moment someone else in your agency needs to see where a deal stands without asking you.

From that point a CRM is no longer a luxury but a replacement for your memory. What it costs is a more honest conversation than most websites have; I wrote that out in what does a CRM cost for an agency.

Wecooking is built for exactly that moment: the CRM tracks leads, deals and proposals in stages you set up yourself, and a won deal becomes a client project in one click, including the agreements from the sales process. From €19 per month, all included, currently free in beta.

What it does not do, and you rarely hear this from software makers: it does not fix your follow-up if you do not want to do it. A system full of weekly reminders nobody touches is just as useless as a spreadsheet nobody updates.

Still comfortable in Excel? Stay there. Notice your file has become more of an archive than a working instrument, and trying it for free is the quickest way to see whether it makes a difference without committing first.