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Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?
34 points by nickgervasi on May 20, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 50 comments
With yesterday's announcement of Microsoft Lists, I was curious to learn more about how people use spreadsheets today. Are we using them for complex calculations, or simply to store lists/tables of data?

Most of my recent sheets were simply lists. Here are the last five I've opened: 1. Lead prospecting (accounting firms) 2. Lead prospecting (B2B SaaS companies) 3. Cap table 4. Health insurance plans 5. VSCO April 2020 Layoffs Candidate List

If you're curious, you can get your list at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/.




We, extracttable.com, use Google Spreadsheets, a minimal, to save the signup via Google Forms which is also linked to an endpoint using the app scripts to generate an API key.

The biggest workflow I witnessed is from our user, a financial intelligence platform from Brazil, which initially takes data from images and do a manual entry to spreadsheets, has a significant pipeline with as many as 200+ macros defined for their business flow that takes down to close a final output of their clients need.

Prerelease: I planned for a Show HN post, next Tuesday, as we are yet to publish the below content in our site.

We have built a Spreadsheet Add-on (https://gsuite.google.com/marketplace/app/extracttable_image...) to aid their business process that extracts table data from images and puts into the spreadsheet.

Offer: For HN community, take 20% extra credits on your purchase with an email to apikey@extracttable.com with the subject "From HN."


extracttable.com looks cool! Looking forward to reading the Show HN post!


I have so many Google Sheets.

I track my weight, running performance, workout progress, my spendings, savings, investment performance, car expenses, all trips out of the country (for visa purpose) and more.

Everything with fancy charts showing progress and how well I'm achieving my goals.


wouldn't this be easier if you could do it in an application?


I'm using a Google Spreadsheet as a database backend for my portfolio. (https://andrefuchs.github.io/) I wanted a solution that is lightweight and easy to update.


That's pretty cool! I took a look at your repo out of curiosity. I didn't realize Google Sheets had an easy way to read sheet data as JSON. Neat!


A few things that I use it for: Pre-programed D&D stat trackers because it's free and Pathfinder is... complicated. Factorio base ratio calculations, and EvE online related market data. Quickly sharing database query output. A simple weight tracker.

Most of these things are and can be independent services, the issue is if I need something now that's ad hoc, then Sheets provides a computation sandbox in a format that most people are familiar with.


Interesting! I also used a spreadsheet a while back when playing reactoridle.com. Similarly, I had a spreadsheet for my weight and body fat % every day.

Agree that while independent services are possible, it's hard to beat the flexibility you get from Sheets.


Currently, I use Google Sheets for tracking expenses and investments. There are two files, one for tracking expenses and the other is for investments.

I track my daily expenses in a sheet. A sheet is indicated the month and the year. Once I spend the money I input the expense soon to prevent from forgetting. It's simple. A table with a category expense, detail expense, and the amount. This is something that I want to do because this habit can make me understand how I spend my money. I mean do I appreciate the money?

For investments, a sheet is indicated a category of investments. Stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, for example. I also use a simple table to track what I buy or sell. By the way, Google Sheets has a GOOGLEFINANCE formula [0] that is very usefull for getting the price of a stock.

[0]: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093281?hl=fr


For a fun side project, I decided to use Google Sheets as a database that would be easily editable by the general public (non-developers).

It is currently populating data for a crowdsourced map of San Francisco Bay Area third-wave coffee roasters:

https://hdehal.github.io/coffee-maps

I was able to quickly get the app created in React, and while Google Sheets has extensive API docs (https://developers.google.com/sheets/api), I found it far easier to use the simplified Node.js wrapper from https://github.com/theoephraim/node-google-spreadsheet

On occasion, I'll get a friendly "request for access" with someone adding a roaster to the list (and the map gets populated automatically), so it's fairly hands-off.


That's pretty cool! I was recently looking at Google's API docs as well, but I'll definitely check out node-google-spreadsheet.

One thing I could never figure out from Google's API docs is whether you can retrieve the revision history of a particular cell? Going out on a limb here, but has anyone had any luck with this?


I use it as a great way to share data from ad-hoc queries, and often times can drive a quick workflow without having to build out a full set of screens in our line of business app.

On a personal level, despite many attempts to find a perfect app, my relatively simple set of budgeting spreadsheets is still the best solution I've ever come up with.

Not Google Sheets, but the president of our company has been able to build out a new line of business app using Excel in a few weeks, something that would have taken use several months or more using our traditional development approaches (it will eventually be moved there for robustness, but using spreadsheets as a prototyping tool and letting those who understand the business hammer out the logic, before handing off to developers, is a great approach. A working spreadsheet is definitely the best requirements doc in the world)


> using spreadsheets as a prototyping tool and letting those who understand the business hammer out the logic, before handing off to developers, is a great approach. A working spreadsheet is definitely the best requirements doc in the world

Just FYI, that approach definitely hasn't been my experience. A spreadsheet at a moment in time doesn't encapsulate users' true requirements (and they won't tell you what their real requirements are when you ask).

My story: I built a more "robust" version of the spreadsheet, with a normalized database schema, the very hottest UI framework, etc., and exactly the same logic. Some of this got pretty complex, of course: copying and pasting a bunch of cells is easy on a spreadsheet, but a hassle to build in a custom app. So it took some time.

I came back and showed the app to the users and found that the spreadsheet had actually changed quite a bit. Columns had been added for a new team, the widget approval process had sprouted some manual overrides, and more (the lack of an effective spreadsheet diff tool or change management prevented me from knowing the complete story).

I went off again, updated the app for the new process, came back to a changed spreadsheet, etc. We iterated for quite a while before the developers and the business gave up in frustration. The breaking point was when we were asked to add a calculation engine to the app so that users could add columns of cells with new formulas. (That's when I decided to leave that job and go help build a better spreadsheet).

Spreadsheets don't feel robust to developers, but business people do not feel that pain. If robustness is the main selling point of the replacement, I'd make sure that business users are screaming for robustness. I'd want dollar-signed disasters that were the result of too much flexibility.


"I use it as a great way to share data from ad-hoc queries" So you run some database queries, copy/paste the results in Google Sheets, then share them with other folks on the team? What do they do with the data? How often are you generating these query results?

"A working spreadsheet is definitely the best requirements doc in the world" +1. I had a summer job in high school writing small programs for a local business, one of which was a tool to manage their workplace injury claims. Previously they were calculating everything in Excel, so translating that into a VB6 app was really straight forward.


I use Google Sheets to share ad-hoc queries with other people too. Fun tip for those who use Postgres: psql has a command `\copy` that allows you to write the results of a query out into a local (clientside) CSV file. From there, it's pretty straightforward to import that into a Google Sheet.


Yeah, I use Datagrip, which lets you easily copy a query's results to TSV data in the clipboard, so you can't quickly paste into Google Sheets.


there's a lot of good personal finance apps out there, mint?


Like I said, I've tried a lot of them. They're all good apps, but none seemed to fit the way I like to plan and track what's going on.


how do you do it that's so different?


To see an interesting use -- check out https://www.tillerhq.com/. An entire business built on top of google sheets.

Unfortunately, i didn't care for it (I didn't like the way they handled splits or the import from amazon)


I’ve got three files open right now. One is calculating contract rates based on hourly, weekly, and monthly contracts and various discounts. One is a list of RFPs, contacts for them, and their status. One is costing out a few options for a home office setup.

So a combination of lists and light calculations.

In the past I’ve also used them as awkward makeshift databases and leaned heavily on conditional formatting to highlight data points that required action.


I've tracked my wedding-related costs with my at-the-time-fiancee-and-now-wife.

Then we've used couple times it to calculate some monthly living costs and savings.

And the last time I've used it was for keeping track of all recruitment processes I've took part of (because over a week I've applied to like hundreds companies and it was difficult then to differ which company was offering what etc.)


"Let's build a product that is better than spreadsheets!" - 50% of founders of recently-failed B2B startups

Sorry for the joculariry, but having worked for such a company, I have a bit of amusement of how prevalent that idea is, and also how amazingly Teflon free spreadsheets are in comparison to so many of the more beautiful and usable paid alternatives (freemium things like Airtable aside)...


No need to apologize. :) There's a reason spreadsheets are so widely used, and I often find myself using Google Sheets or Excel for a wide array of tasks before even considering more specialized alternatives. I'm already paying for it (or it's free), I know how to use it, and it's extremely flexible.

"having worked for such a company" If you don't mind me asking, which company was that?


In my personal life, I use Google Sheets to help me shop for larger purchases. For example, choosing tires for my car. I made a spreadsheet of all the available tires that fit my car, with columns for specs, prices of different retailers, user review numbers, and government ratings. Then I filter what's important to me and calculate my own rating based on the remaining columns.


I recently used Google Sheets to create a simple list[0] of people who want to co-hack on projects.

[0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YKQ9g6h4BuWI32xcMbSM...


Curious - do any online communities exist for this purpose?


None that I know of. But in the past people use to linger around various IRC channels to meet others and start projects together.


I use one sheet every day to track my time. It’s simple enough with 24 x 365 cells for each year’s sheet. It takes me around 30s a day to fill it out. It’s mostly guesstimating what I was doing during the day. It’s a fun way to look back on my week.

I honestly think this is one of the most impactful things I’ve done to reduce wasting my time.


That's great. Do you use a consistent naming scheme or categories to help aggregate data?


Yep! Every cell can hold values from a list. You can read more about it from where I originally found it: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/5lh6tc/eve...


Connecting APIs with Google Sheets for business intel and data analysis purposes using our tool https://apipheny.io


I track my workout progress in a sheet that is backing a google form. After every session, I enter the details from my phone. My priorities were: 1. not having to install yet another app; 2. not locking my data into a silo.


I've been using Google sheets to curate the remote jobs from many job sources. It's a really an easy database for me since I have limited database skills.

Also, Airtable for some cases and when it's relevant.


I use Sheets for personal data tracking, for content planning, for making quick financial projections, etc, etc, etc.

Would be easily top used tool for me if it wasn't blocked on the company level where I work.


Interesting- why is it blocked at work?


Tracking shipping containers as they progress from supplier -> port -> ship(s)/port(s) -> port of discharge -> rail -> depot -> our warehouse and then returned to the depot.


Interesting use case! Any reason you didn't consider something like Trello for this? It seems like it would fit it nicely and give you a nice visual overview of where each shipping container is.


It has other data that I need to store, bunch of relevant dates and locations of pickup/dropoffs.

I have an script that updates our ERP from that spreadsheet.

I also have a google apps script that sends out an email with all the relevant containers. e.g. container ABCD needs to be picked up by 5/12/2020 and container UVWX needs to be returned by 5/17/2020.

This allows our logistics guy to allocate resources.


Aside from draggable cards and swimlanes, Trello doesn't make for a great solution where you need to store structured data, especially if you need to additionally query or filter on that data.

Probably far easier to just build out a visualization and keep the data in the spreadsheet.

I tend to store status in a dropdown in the spreadsheet, and color-code the row based on status.


I see. I haven't used it myself, but I know Trello has a custom fields feature to add structured data to each card (https://help.trello.com/article/1067-using-the-custom-fields...).

Are you the only one working out of this spreadsheet or do you share it with others?


In this instance, it's just me, but I've used shared spreadsheets on Google with no issues.


Got it. Transparently, I've been working on a tool called Flowdash (https://flowdash.com) that helps bring structured data to workflows like this. I'd love to get your feedback since it sounds like you're pretty familiar with the problem.


My most recent spreadsheets are: Budget, Shared expenses, Catan Quarantine League, Metrics Dashboard, Talent List.

So a mix of personal finance, dashboards, and lists.


I used them to grade students, multiple teachers can edit the document at the same time and the grades are computed dynamically.


I track my budget in Sheets. I have some AWS Lambda functions that IFTT calls to update the sheets with new data


I'm interested in hearing more about this setup. What triggers the IFTTT calls and what do the Lambda calls accomplish?


Budget and date night ideas are our two main used sheets


They fit perfectly on my Google Bed.


(＾▽＾)




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