Signs the spreadsheet has become the problem
A shared sheet is a sensible first CRM. It stops being one when:
- Two people edit the same row and one change disappears.
- Follow-ups depend on someone remembering to check a date column.
- The weekly pipeline number takes an hour of copying and fixing formulas.
- Only one person really understands what each status means.
- Sharing the pipeline with finance or a co-founder means exporting yet another copy.
Day 1: decide what to keep
Not every column deserves a field. Keep what drives a decision (company, contact, owner, stage, value, next step and date) and archive the rest. Agree on stage names with the people who will use them; designing a sales pipeline has a simple method.
Day 2: clean and split the sheet
Split one wide sheet into companies, contacts and deals, remove duplicates and standardise owners and dates. Each row needs something stable to match on, such as an email address.
Day 3: import a sample, then the rest
Export each tab as CSV and import about fifty rows first. Check owners, stages and links, fix the mapping, then import companies, contacts and deals in that order. The CSV migration checklist goes step by step. The self-serve import wizard is in build (Soon); until then, guided onboarding does this step for you.
Day 4: replace the habits, not just the data
The spreadsheet ran on habits: a reminder column, a Monday copy-paste, a colour code. Replace each with something that runs itself: tasks instead of reminder dates, a dashboard instead of the Monday report, and email sequences that stop on reply (coming to Team and above) instead of a follow-up column.
Day 5: give everyone the right seat
People who update deals get Full Seats. People who only looked at the sheet, such as a co-founder, an advisor or finance, can take Light Seats (from $3, depending on plan) and read the same live pipeline. Then make the sheet read-only, so there is one source of truth.
Want a hand?
Guided onboarding ($600 one-time) covers mapping, validation, migration and training with a specialist. See how migration works.