What the tool includes

Every sheet starts from the same tested foundation. The parts below are not a menu to be ticked; they are what almost every long series turns out to need, already built, so your attention goes to the material rather than to the plumbing.

Nothing in this list is compulsory. A sheet that needs four of these parts uses four of them, and the rest stay out of the way so they cannot become one more thing to understand.

Series, and why they are the unit

A series is a name, a type, a unit of measure and an ordered list of values. Everything else in the tool reads from that: a table counts a series, a check tests a series, an export writes a series. Records go wrong when the order and the unit live in somebody's head instead of in the file, and a name plus a stated unit is the cheapest correction available.

Typed columns and the rules an entry must pass

A column knows whether it holds a whole number, a decimal, a date or a short label, and it can carry a range, a required flag and a note explaining what belongs in it. The rules are the ones you wrote down when the sheet was set up. Nothing is corrected silently, because a tool that quietly rewrites your data is a tool you cannot audit.

The check that runs while you type

Four tests run on a batch as it goes in: the same value repeated in the row above, a gap where the sequence should be continuous, a figure outside the range the column states, and a running total held against the total you were reading from. A failed check is shown, never enforced in the dark, and an override is written into the history with the reason you gave for it.

Tables, totals and frequency counts

A table is defined once and recalculated on demand: totals and subtotals, how often each value appears, how two columns look against each other, and how a month compares with the same month a year earlier. The definition is stored with the sheet, so the table you looked at last spring can be reproduced exactly rather than remembered approximately.

Import from the sheet you already keep

Most people arrive with years of rows in a spreadsheet. The importer reads the file, proposes a mapping from its columns to yours, and shows you the first rows as it understood them. Anything it cannot place is reported rather than dropped, and the original file is left untouched on disk so a bad import costs an afternoon and never the record.

Export, printing, and files that still open later

Everything the tool stores about a series can be written out as comma-separated data, as a spreadsheet file, or as a sheet laid out for paper. The export includes the column definitions and the revision history, not only the values, so nothing about your record exists solely inside our format.

Revision history, and who changed which row

Corrections are entries in their own right rather than overwrites. Each change keeps the previous value, the time, the person, and the reason where one was given. That is what makes a long series defensible months later, when the only remaining question is why one figure in March is not what somebody remembers it being.

Offline entry and reconciliation

Connections fail in basements, storerooms and car parks. Entry keeps working from a local copy and reconciles when the connection returns, with a stated rule for which version takes precedence when two devices touched the same row, and both of them preserved so the decision can be looked at rather than trusted.

Accessibility and data handling

Contrast, text scaling, focus order, labels on every control, full keyboard entry and behaviour that survives a screen reader are part of the definition of finished. On the handling side: transport encryption, secrets kept out of the source, least-privilege access and a written answer to what is stored, where, and for how long. The privacy policy on this site describes the practice for this site itself.

What sits outside the tool

Anything genuinely specific to your material stays with you: what a row means, which unit it is in, and what you conclude from the column at the end. The foundation exists so that those decisions get the attention, not so that every record ends up shaped like the foundation. Where a requirement fights the tool hard enough, the tool is the part that gives way.

How the parts are kept current

The shared parts are maintained centrally and checked on a fixed schedule, which is why a correctness fix or a format change reaches every sheet we look after without a separate negotiation for each one.

Ask about a partSee how a sheet is kept