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UpLabs vs spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are the most underrated software in any studio. They are also the reason most studios cannot answer simple questions.
5 min read · Updated 5 September 2026
Where spreadsheets genuinely win
We started in one. They are free, instant, infinitely flexible and everyone already knows how to use them. For a one- or two-person practice with a handful of live projects, a well-kept sheet is not a compromise — it is the correct answer, and we would not try to talk you out of it.
- No setup, no migration, no per-seat cost.
- Any layout you can imagine, changed in seconds.
- Nothing to learn.
Where they start to break
The failure is not dramatic. It arrives as three separate versions of the fee tracker, a formula someone dragged one row short, and the realisation that nobody knows which file is current.
| Symptom | Underlying cause |
|---|---|
| Three versions of the same tracker | No single record; every copy is equally valid |
| Invoice numbers repeat or skip | Numbering by hand |
| Retention forgotten | It lives in a column nobody sorts by |
| Nobody logs hours | A shared sheet is a bad phone interface |
| Profitability calculated once a year | Cost and fee live in different files |
| A departing employee takes context with them | The knowledge was in the sheet's conventions, not the data |
Side by side
| Spreadsheets | UpLabs | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to start | Free | Paid, with a free Starter trial |
| Flexibility | Total | Shaped around how design projects run |
| Single source of truth | Only by discipline | Built in |
| Phone use | Poor | Designed for it |
| Invoicing | Manual, template-based | Raised from the project |
| Profitability | A separate exercise | Continuous |
| Multiple people at once | Workable, error-prone | Expected |
| Your data | Yours, in a file | Yours, exportable at any time |
When it is actually worth switching
- More than about five live projects at once.
- More than two people needing the same numbers.
- Someone spends a recognisable part of each week maintaining the sheets.
- You cannot answer 'what is owed to us right now' without opening three files.
If none of those are true yet, keep the spreadsheet. We would rather you arrive when it is genuinely useful.