The real cost of spreadsheet workarounds
Shadow spreadsheets feel free — they are not. When staff rebuild ERP tasks in Excel, the cost is the hours spent re-keying and reconciling, plus the errors that slip through. This calculator turns those hours into an annual figure. Enter four numbers and see what your workarounds cost per year.
Indicative only. Direct labour is people x hours x 46 working weeks x hourly cost; the rework uplift adds the error rate on top to approximate the cost of correcting mistakes. Your real figure will differ — a discovery sprint measures it properly.
What that money is actually buying you
Nothing. Spreadsheet workarounds exist because the ERP interface is too slow or too fiddly for a daily task — so staff rebuild it in Excel, by hand, every week. The data ends up in three places, none trusted, and the hours never come back. A staff portal puts that exact task on one fast screen reading live ERP data, which is why the workaround disappears rather than moving to a new tool.