Your spreadsheet became the system—make it a real one.
Microsoft Excel to a web app, without starting over. The workbooks you run on already describe your process—we turn them into one web application with real records, permissions and history.
The workbook and the app run side by side until the numbers match, and the switch is rehearsed before it's real.
- Formulas turned into rules you can read
- Workbook kept until the numbers match
- Rehearsed switch, with rollback
// where the seams are
What a spreadsheet-run business tends to look like
Nobody decides to run a company on spreadsheets. A workbook solves one problem well, gets copied, gains a tab, and a few years later it is the system. Turning it into an app follows the legacy modernization method: survey, mirror, side by side, switch.
A typical setup: a master workbook on a shared drive, a pricing tab full of lookups, a schedule in a second file, and copies named final_v3 in people's inboxes. It works—until two people save over each other, a formula breaks quietly, or nobody can say which copy is current.
- Requestswere emails to whoever's free
- Jobswere rows in the master workbook on the shared drive
- Pricingwas a hidden tab of lookups in that workbook
- Schedulingwas a second workbook, one tab per week
- Statuswas color-coded cells and a hallway question
- Billingwas re-keyed into the accounting system
Before: 4 places the data lives · re-entered by handAfter: 1 platform · entered once
// before and after
A workbook everyone edits, or an app everyone shares
With the spreadsheets
- Two people save over each other, and one of them loses the afternoon
- A broken formula gives a wrong number nobody notices
- Nobody can say which copy is the current one
- Anyone can see, and change, every column
- Jobs are re-typed into scheduling and billing
After the cutover
- One record per job, edited by many people at once
- The formulas turned into rules you can read and test
- One current version, with the history of every change
- Permissions by role—people see what their job needs
- Jobs flow to the schedule and to billing without re-keying
Not ready for a call? Start with a free check of where your data gets re-keyed: Count your seams
// how it works
How we turn a workbook into an app
The same four steps, with the specifics a spreadsheet needs.
- 1
Survey
We trace every tab, formula, lookup and macro, and every copy in circulation. The logic hiding in formulas gets written down as rules the people who use them can confirm.
- 2
Mirror
We build the data model and load the workbook's rows into it on a schedule. Your team keeps working in the spreadsheet; nothing changes for them yet.
- 3
Side by side
The same jobs go through both. We compare totals, prices and schedules line by line until the app and the workbook agree, and explain every difference.
- 4
Switch
We rehearse the cutover on a copy, then switch on a date you choose. The final workbook is kept read-only, so going back is a decision, not a rebuild.
From the first call to the last switch
Each rung of the engagement has one job. Here is what each one means for a spreadsheet.
What we cover
- Which workbooks the business actually runs on
- Where the copies and the re-keying start
- Whether an app is the right fix, or a better spreadsheet is
What we cover
- A walk through the tabs and formulas that matter
- The seams traced to the systems around them
- A one-page map you can take to your leadership
What it includes
- A survey of every workbook, tab, formula and macro
- A map of where the data lives and who re-keys it
- A cutover plan with rehearsal and rollback
- The first automation to build once it's unified
- The measure each phase must move
How each phase runs
- The core records first, then the views people work in
- A rehearsal on a copy before every switch
- The final workbook kept read-only
- Each phase measured before the next begins
The paid pilot
- One seam, taken from start to finish
- A fixed fee, agreed in the Blueprint
- Exit criteria written down before work starts
- Run in your own environment where your requirements call for it
- A decision at the end: continue to the next phase, or stop
Questions about turning Excel into a web app
Can't we just move the spreadsheet to the cloud?
You can, and for a shared list it is often enough. It stops working when the workbook is really a database—when rows are jobs, tabs are steps in a process, and formulas are business rules. Shared editing then means shared breakage. A web app gives each job one record, real permissions and a history.
What happens to our formulas and macros?
We read every one before we build. Formulas and macros usually hold your pricing, approvals and exceptions, so we write each rule down in plain language, confirm it with the people who rely on it, and rebuild it as a rule the app enforces and you can read. Formulas that no longer matter are retired on purpose.
Can people keep using Excel during the switch?
Yes. The workbook stays the system of record through the survey, the mirror and the side-by-side period, so nobody's day changes until the app has matched it. At the switch the final workbook is kept read-only, and if people still want a spreadsheet for their own analysis, an export can be part of the app.
We use Google Sheets, Airtable or Smartsheet. Does this still apply?
Yes. When a team runs on Google Sheets, Airtable or Smartsheet, the patterns are the same as with Microsoft Excel: rules buried in formulas and automations, records copied between sheets, and a process one person understands. We survey the sheets or bases, mirror the data, run both side by side, and switch once the numbers agree.
Is a custom web app overkill for a team our size?
Not when the spreadsheet is already the system. The real question is whether the re-keying, the version mix-ups and the one person who maintains the workbook cost more than building it properly once. The survey answers that with your own numbers—and sometimes the honest answer is to fix the spreadsheet instead.
Who does the work?
The owner of UniCorp leads every engagement, from the first call to the last switch, and is accountable for what ships. An AI-assisted engineering team builds it, and every change is tested before it reaches your systems. You meet the people doing the work before you commit.
Find your constraint. Get capacity back.
A free 30-minute call. We'll name the one constraint holding you back and the fastest path past it—whether or not you work with us.
30 minutes—bring the workbook, leave with a cutover order.