Can an app beat a spreadsheet?

[David Schwartz 426]

I'm wondering if anybody here has been faced with moving something from a spreadsheet into an app and what your experience was like in terms of how users liked it. I'm especially curious if you didn't get a bunch of people asking later, "Why don't you just put this out in a spreadsheet?"

 

When I hear people complain about their finances, I've developed an approach that seems to address a lot of the things that underlie their complaints.

 

I have been using Excel to track my expenses and help with budgeting for several years and I am thinking of how I could package it up and offer it to others.

There are some things I'd like to see that I can't do in my version of Excel (or couldn't when I tried) and other things that are just cumbersome because of how spreadsheets work.

 

That is to say, there are things that work in one version / platform of one spreadsheet app but not in others. (For example, I use a Mac, and for many release cycles, Excel for Mac did not support conditional macros. It did at one point, then Microsoft removed that support; they may have put it back in again. Now they have both web-based and platform-based versions and they don't have the exact same feature set. I have no idea how Google Sheets or OpenOffice compare, but I'm guessing they're not exactly the same either.)

 

So I'm not sure that just publishing it as a spreadsheet, or instructions on using a spreadsheet, wouldn't result in a nightmare of support tickets, unless I targeted a "common subset" of features that I know work (today) on all of the most popular tools (which would probably force me to remove several nice features).

 

A Good Thing about a spreadsheet is that you can enter and edit data right in the cells, although I'm not sure how much of a benefit that is in this case over a little popup form that lets you just "Add/Edit an Item". I know it's possible to set up grids in Delphi that allow you to edit cells directly, so that can be side-stepped if desired.

 

One Bad Thing about spreadsheets is that when you add or delete rows, sometimes formulas get messed up and you have to fix them. There's also no way to organize notes "on the side" easily. (The area to the right of my monthly grids has become flooded with notes that don't really fit well in a grid structure.)

 

I'm curious what others think who've been faced with this situation before....

[FPiette 382]

Excel is a really huge product. Moving an app from Excell to a Delphi program maybe easy or very complex up to the point to a complete Excel rewrite. But if you just do some very basic calculation and display, then a StringGrid and Delphi code may work. This depends completely on the needs.

[Pat Foley 51]

I used XL on Mac starting with 2 through XL 4. XL 4 added forms--by printing out the macro sheet and taping the sheets One had the big picture with all the forms and code together

Not sure what goes on Apple side now.

 

Example does not to be on macro sheet.

cellname         a       b           c

              'name    'variable 'comment

               'xvalue   1            'after being renamed "b2" shows as xvalue

               'yvalue   1 

               'zvalue   =xvalue+yvalue  '

 

Naming ranges is number thing to do and use namemanager to help or F5 to navigate to named range F2 to edit in cell.

To get VBA up <alt><f11> <alt><f10> new macro sheet?

Also use record macro helps alot!I

 

I been porting a XL Logging app to D. XL VBA is unsupported now.    Easier to share install package then .xlsm today. 

  

 

 

 

   

 

Edited December 27, 2020 by Pat Foley
Added line

[David Schwartz 426]

1 minute ago, FPiette said:

Excel is a really huge product. Moving an app from Excell to a Delphi program maybe easy or very complex up to the point to a complete Excel rewrite. But if you just do some very basic calculation and display, then a StringGrid and Delphi code may work. This depends completely on the needs.

Yeah, well ... it's basic personal finance -- tracking periodic / recurring income and expenses in a meaningful way. I could probably do what I need with a TListView since the calcs are mostly additions and subtractions of two cells, or sums of several cells.

 

As I said, it would be nice to be able to highlight certain cells based on simple formulas. In spreadsheets, that would be done with Conditional Macros, which are not universally supported. In Delphi it's quite simple.

[Mike Torrettinni 198]

2 hours ago, David Schwartz said:

A Good Thing about a spreadsheet is that you can enter and edit data right in the cells, although I'm not sure how much of a benefit that is in this case over a little popup form that lets you just "Add/Edit an Item". I know it's possible to set up grids in Delphi that allow you to edit cells directly, so that can be side-stepped if desired.

 

One Bad Thing about spreadsheets is that when you add or delete rows, sometimes formulas get messed up and you have to fix them. There's also no way to organize notes "on the side" easily. (The area to the right of my monthly grids has become flooded with notes that don't really fit well in a grid structure.)

Are you thinking of making a commercial product? In that case I would first send your excel to some interested people and let them use it for a little bit. You will see how much customization is needed for their tracking expenses needs. Anybody knowing excel will probably even want to make some substantial changes. Then you can see if you can recreate such customization in Delphi.
 

If you post it here, you could probably have some feedback really fast.

[Stano 143]

Do existing programs not solve this problem? For example, MS Money.

https://windowsreport.com/microsoft-money-windows-10-2/

[Bill Meyer 337]

I think that Excel may be the most overused application on PCs. My observation is that it has been used, and badly, in highly repetitive tasks which would be excellent candidates for replacement by dedicated applications.

 

A spreadsheet is great for what if operations, and for quick and dirty manipulations of data. However, once people begin inserting formulas in many cells, things rapidly go off the rails, and repetitive labor is used in lieu of intelligent design.

 

That said, I would make exceptions for tools such as the late, lamented Lotus Improv, and its successor, Quantrix, both far better suited to well designed analyses.

Edited December 27, 2020 by Bill Meyer

[David Schwartz 426]

 

32 minutes ago, Bill Meyer said:

I think that Excel may be the most overused application on PCs. My observation is that it has been used, and badly, in highly repetitive tasks which would be excellent candidates for replacement by dedicated applications.

I agree. In this case, I started out using Excel for lack of anything better. I wasn't sure what I was after exactly, just a way to forecast upcoming payments against my income.

 

It looks like I started in mid-2014. It has evolved somewhat. It doesn't do any real analysis, it's more like a consolidated report of all my income and recurring (or expected) expenses. Kind of like a dashboard. I hardly even pay attention to the income side now; it's the expenses I'm most concerned with paying on-time.

 

I tried a couple of services that display all of your different account activities in one place, but I found that to be pretty much useless. 

 

Everything I've seen presents historical data. They're like watching things in your rear-view mirror. That does not help avoid bouncing checks or making late payments that result in late fees, in the future.

 

Given delays that are inherint in various payment channels, by the time you notice something show up, it's too late to do anything about it.

 

That's the biggest complaint I hear from people. Maybe folks in other countries relate to their finances differently, but we here in America aren't very good with basic math like that.

 

As far as passing out the spreadsheet for people to play with and give feedback ... I think it would be far easier to support an app. So maybe that answers my question. 🙂

 

With an app, I imagine that people will have ideas that relate more to their financies rather than how to improve how the spreadsheet works. 

[David Schwartz 426]

1 hour ago, Stano said:

Do existing programs not solve this problem? For example, MS Money.

https://windowsreport.com/microsoft-money-windows-10-2/

MS Money competed with Quicken and QuickBooks; surprisingly, this is one area where MS was unable to conquer a market. I used QB for years. It was helpful come tax time for dealing with historical data, but it didn't really help me manage my cashflow at all.

 

[Mike Torrettinni 198]

wrong post.

Edited December 28, 2020 by Mike Torrettinni

[Anders Melander 1782]

6 hours ago, David Schwartz said:

I'm wondering if anybody here has been faced with moving something from a spreadsheet into an app and what your experience was like in terms of how users liked it. I'm especially curious if you didn't get a bunch of people asking later, "Why don't you just put this out in a spreadsheet?"

I worked as the lead developer for seven years at a company that pretty much made it their business to move people from Excel to "something better".

https://sigmaestimates.com/

 

[Lars Fosdal 1792]

I use Excel for my overtime balance sheet. 

I could have written a Delphi app, but Excel and SharePoint is very practical. 

I can edit the spreadsheet on the PC or on the phone on the go.

 

I wonder, should I make another sheet to track my insomnia? 😛

[dummzeuch 1505]

Excel is a nice tool for simple everyday tasks. It becomes a support nightmare once it somehow gets involved in the business procedures, because of course everybody thinks he is an expert in Excel and knows exactly how to use it and how to change stuff. Sooner or later you will end up with a monster spreadsheet that nobody can understand.

 

As to the topic: Either people know how to use spreadsheets, then they will probably already use it for that task, or they don't, in which case they most likely will be overwhelmed when you give them anything more than a table with a few sums. Will they pay you for support? By the hour? If not, don't use Excel. You will end up either spending a lot of unpaid time for support or they will hate you, because you don't.

[David Heffernan 2345]

20 hours ago, David Schwartz said:

I am thinking of how I could package it up and offer it to others.

Talk to other people and see what they want. 

[David Schwartz 426]

3 hours ago, dummzeuch said:

Excel is a nice tool for simple everyday tasks. It becomes a support nightmare once it somehow gets involved in the business procedures, because of course everybody thinks he is an expert in Excel and knows exactly how to use it and how to change stuff. Sooner or later you will end up with a monster spreadsheet that nobody can understand.

 

As to the topic: Either people know how to use spreadsheets, then they will probably already use it for that task, or they don't, in which case they most likely will be overwhelmed when you give them anything more than a table with a few sums. Will they pay you for support? By the hour? If not, don't use Excel. You will end up either spending a lot of unpaid time for support or they will hate you, because you don't.

Exactly!

[Guest]

Here in Brazil, Excell spreadsheets were used a lot by companies (mainly Accounting) or by home users to control their personal finances, long before the "IDE" for MSWindows became more accessible for software development companies, which demanded of time and price often inaccessible to many.

 

Many companies, and some accounting professionals, created and sold their spreadsheets-software, a kind of application in Excell, considering that this software has a very large eco-system with regard to calculations and solutions.

 

Regardless of what some consider it bloated and unattractive. It is "big", and, like everything "big", it is overlooked by the lack of the necessary learning to try to master it.

 

Here, such companies and professionals, created spreadsheets with data entry "forms", and showed their reports and graphs as if they were independent software. For most, it was like using software that was created for that specific purpose. Everything practical and non-evasive. At this time, the "Clipper" reigned among programmers, because its closest competitor, Microsoft's VB, was expensive (for both sides) and did not bring the speed of the old MSDOS screen.

Today, Excel still resists in the finance departments of large companies, however, with ERP's in full use, you often don't even see Excell appear on the computer screen. When wrong, it was a wrong click on the MS Excell icon.

Undoubtedly, IBM's 1,2,3 Lotus was the gateway to software like MS Excell.

         

 

But it can still be used very well, however, it requires a lot of technical knowledge to use all its power ... and, time, humanity does not seem to have much to spend for routine tasks.

 

Naturally, like any MS application, you can make use of Database through the native ODBC in the software, this way, you can even share your data or even, read the data from a Database external to your machine (on your network or internet);

 

He was already a visionary even when others still thought of being.

 

Here, a sample to MSExcell - Financial Controler

https://workupload.com/file/f4TNCjn7Suj

 

hug

Edited December 28, 2020 by Guest

[dummzeuch 1505]

Just remembered capecod gunny (Michael Riley) who wrote some financial software in Delphi. Not sure whether it can apply here because it seem very specific to - in my view - typical American problems.

 

https://www.zilchworks.com/zilch-standard.asp

[Rollo62 536]

I used to work with Excel heavily, even with interactive, app-like documents, in the past.

All that was very nice and efficient, but I still would say that I only touched 10% of Excels capabilities.

Nowadays I still work with older Excel 2003, since this is the last mainly compatiblle Excel version,
for all the features I loved to use.

 

I try to move to LibreOffice instead, but only as spreadsheet and not with all VBA features, and
all my interactive features are broken nowadays.

Unfortunately either Excel, Office365 and LibreOffice were not able to give that light ease of use of the old Excel versions.

And I'm talking about the ease of use for inserting lines, formats, printing formatting, etc.

All that is gone now, or very much limited, where I see the old Excel still as perfect UI, which I even used
as replacement for Word in some cases.

 

I considered many times, to put my stuff into an Excel-replacement-app, but I think from the 10% I ever used, cut another 10%,

so even that remaining 1% of the normal Excel would be a too tough project.

Even is you use libraries from TMS or others, this is quite tough to re-implement the basic convenience features,

and still a lot of manual coding is needed.

 

I'm looking more towards solutions in HTML5, CSS, JavaScript right now, to make nice, interactive, print-friendly data presenstations,

where HTML seems to be much more flexible than Delphi could every be.

Always when I have to fill a PDF form, I think OMG, why on earth has Microsoft give away control over the spreadsheet market,
which they once 100% ruled, so that this ugly peace of modern PDF could happen.