From Excel to AppSheet: How a Construction Company Automated Operations

Over a billion people worldwide use Excel. Around 54% of businesses rely on it daily. That makes sense: it's accessible, familiar, and flexible.

The problem is that people use it for things it was never designed for. Excel was built for calculations and data analysis. Not for project management. Not for CRM. Not for tracking worker hours across construction sites.

As a company grows, Excel starts working against it. Research shows that 94% of business spreadsheets contain critical errors. Not typos, but errors that affect decisions and money.

And it's no wonder. 37% of people who spend more than half their workday in Excel have never received any formal training. They learned by trial and error.

Here's another fact: roughly 60% of US businesses still depend on Excel as their primary tool for business processes. Not ERP systems. Not specialized software. Spreadsheets where anyone can accidentally delete a formula and nobody notices for weeks.

The typical problems we see with clients:

• Someone sorts a table and the data shifts for everyone else.
• No validation: text ends up in date columns, required fields stay empty.
• Version history? None. Who changed the price in row 347 last Thursday? Nobody knows.
• Mobile access? Theoretically possible, practically unusable for complex spreadsheets.

And so a company spends 3-4 hours every week just consolidating data from different files into one report. Manually. Every single week.

Switex is a construction company based in Katowice, Poland. They manage multiple construction sites simultaneously: crews, subcontractors, materials, invoices.

Before working with us, they operated with 15+ Excel files. Each site had its own spreadsheet. Invoices were in another one. Work hours in a third. Cost estimates in a fourth. And so on.

The specific pain points were clear:

• Site foremen had no proper access to data. To log work hours, they needed a laptop or had to wait until they got to the office.
• When one manager sorted a table by date, the entire structure broke for everyone else. Classic Google Sheets behavior.
• Cost estimate data was inconsistent across files. The same item could have different prices in different spreadsheets, and nobody knew which one was correct.
• Data validation was completely absent. Text in number columns. Missing required fields. Future dates in completion fields.
• There was no way to know who changed a specific value and when.

And reports? A manager spent at least 3 hours every week manually gathering data from all files to compile a summary report across sites. That's 12+ hours per month of pure copy-paste work.

AppSheet is a no-code platform by Google that lets you build business applications without writing code. It works on top of Google Sheets, Excel, or databases and transforms spreadsheets into full-featured apps with forms, validation, automation, and mobile access.

Why AppSheet specifically for Switex?

1. Data already in Google Sheets. No need to migrate everything from scratch. AppSheet connects to existing spreadsheets directly.
2. Development speed. A custom CRM for a construction company would cost tens of thousands of PLN and months of development. AppSheet allowed us to launch a working product in 6 weeks
3. Mobile access out of the box. Foremen got a phone app with offline mode. This is critical for construction sites where internet can be unreliable.
4. Cost. An AppSheet license is significantly cheaper than any custom solution, and changes can be made quickly.

For Switex, we created a centralized construction project management system. Here's what it includes:

1. Site management. All construction sites in one place with automatic data import from existing files. Statuses, deadlines, responsible persons. Everything visible on one screen.
2. Invoice system. Materials and services tracked separately. Automatic gross calculation from net with 8% VAT. Totals calculated automatically: quantity times price. Zero manual entry of subtotals.
3. Subcontractor management. Each subcontractor is linked to a specific site. Progress, contract amounts, and payment balances are all visible.
4. Work hour tracking. Workers log time through a mobile app. Decimal format support: you can enter 10.5 hours instead of rounding. Foremen enter data right on site, even without internet. Data syncs automatically when connection returns.
5. Data validation. You cannot enter a future date in a completion field. Required fields are highlighted. Text won't go into a number column.
6. Roles and access. A foreman sees only their sites. A manager sees everything. A director gets summary dashboards with budget charts for each site.
7. PDF reports. One click generates a ready report by site, invoice, or subcontractor. Generated via Google App Script, sent to email automatically.

• Reporting time dropped from 3+ hours per week to 5 minutes. The manager clicks one button, and a PDF report is generated and sent automatically. This isn't marketing, it's a fact.
• Data errors decreased by approximately 90%. Validation prevents incorrect data entry. Required fields don't allow saving records with gaps. Automatic calculations eliminate human error.
• Implementation took 6 weeks. From first meeting to a working system used by the entire company. Without stopping current operations. Data was migrated from existing spreadsheets gradually.
• Project cost started at 4800 PLN. For comparison: custom CRM development for a construction company would cost tens of thousands of PLN and take 4 to 8 months

And most importantly, foremen finally got a tool that works on their phones. On the construction site. Even when the connection drops.