Moving your HR off spreadsheets, and when you genuinely should not bother

When a spreadsheet is still the right answer

This section is not a rhetorical device. If the following describes you, a spreadsheet is a reasonable tool and you should keep it.

Everyone works fixed hours. Same days each week, so a day off in February is worth the same as a day off in August, and entitlement is a straightforward number of days.

One person maintains it. Nobody else edits the file, so there is one version and it is the version. Two people editing the same holiday sheet is where most spreadsheet failures actually begin - not in the maths, in the copies.

You have five or six people. Small enough to hold the whole picture in your head, so the sheet is a record rather than the only source of truth.

Contracts are signed, filed and findable. The spreadsheet is doing one job - tracking holiday - and is not quietly standing in for a personnel file.

If all four are true, moving to software will not make your life better. It will give you a login and a monthly cost for a problem you do not have. Come back when one of them stops being true.

One: anybody on variable hours

This is the sharpest break, and it is arithmetic rather than opinion.

For leave years beginning on or after 1 April 2024, irregular-hours and part-year workers accrue holiday at 12.07% of the hours they actually work in each pay period. Not once a year. Each pay period, as the hours land.

A spreadsheet can do that calculation. What it cannot do is do it reliably twelve times a year for every casual member of staff, while somebody is also running the business. One missed fortnight is a wrong balance that stays wrong until the person leaves and reads their final payslip carefully.

You can check your own figures against ours with the free holiday entitlement calculator before deciding anything.

Two: more than one person approving holiday

The moment a second manager approves leave, the spreadsheet has a concurrency problem that no amount of care solves.

Two people open the file. Both see the same remaining balance. Both approve. One saves over the other. The sheet now shows a number that was true ten minutes ago, and nobody knows it is wrong until two staff turn up expecting the same week off.

This is not a discipline problem. Shared files simply do not have a mechanism for resolving two simultaneous edits, and the failure is silent - which is the worst kind.

Three: an absence dispute with nothing behind it

Absence in a spreadsheet is a count. Days off, perhaps a reason typed in a cell.

What it is not is a record of what you did about it: the return to work conversation, whether adjustments were discussed, what was agreed. If an absence pattern later becomes a capability process or a tribunal claim, the count is not the useful part. The conversations are, and they exist only in somebody's memory.

The related problem is that a reason typed into a shared spreadsheet cell is health information sitting in a file several people can open. That is a different exposure from the one you were worried about.

Four: a request you cannot answer quickly

This is the one that catches people, because it arrives without warning and the deadline is not yours.

Minimum wage records created on or after 1 April 2021 must be kept for at least six years. That part is manageable. The part that is not is the requirement to produce the records for a single pay reference period in a single document.

Read that again, because it is the strongest argument on this page. Not 'we could put it together from the rota, the timesheets and the payroll export'. One document, for one pay period, on request.

If your hours live in one file and your pay lives in another, you cannot satisfy that without an afternoon of work - and HMRC can turn up unannounced. A structure that spans three tabs is not a filing problem at that point. It is a structural one.

What moving actually involves

Honestly, and without the word seamless.

You will need what you already have: names, start dates, entitlements and current balances. If your spreadsheet is in reasonable order, that is the whole input.

Staff are added one at a time, which takes a couple of minutes each. At thirty people that is genuinely an afternoon, and it is worth doing with the spreadsheet open beside you rather than delegating it.

The fiddly part is opening balances, and it is worth understanding why. Your spreadsheet holds a number that is the result of a year of additions and subtractions, some of which were adjustments nobody wrote down. When you type that number into a new system it becomes the starting point, so any drift in it becomes permanent.

Which means the useful moment to move is the start of a leave year, when balances reset and there is nothing to carry. The second best moment is now, having spent an hour checking the balances you are about to carry across rather than trusting them.

Set aside an afternoon, do it with the old file open, and check the first month's figures against what the spreadsheet would have said. If they disagree, you have found something worth knowing either way.

Frequently asked questions

Can I export my data back out?

Yes. HR Henry exports to Excel as a multi-sheet workbook covering employees, qualifications, training and skills, and there is a full JSON export for an individual's data. You came from a spreadsheet and you can leave with one.

Is a spreadsheet ever still the right answer?

Yes, and we would rather say so. Under about five or six people, all on fixed hours, one person maintaining the file, and contracts filed elsewhere - keep the spreadsheet. Software would give you a login and a monthly cost for a problem you do not have.

When is the best time to move?

The start of a leave year, when balances reset and there is nothing to carry across. Failing that, move now but spend an hour checking the opening balances first, because whatever you type in becomes the new starting point.

How long does moving actually take?

Staff are added one at a time, a couple of minutes each. At thirty people that is an afternoon. Do it with the old spreadsheet open beside you rather than delegating it.

What if my spreadsheet balances are wrong?

Then you want to find that out before you carry them over, not after. Check a few against the free holiday entitlement calculator first - particularly anyone on variable hours, where the 12.07% method applies.

Do I have to move everything at once?

No. Most people start with people, holiday and absence, because that is where the spreadsheet is under most strain, and add documents and training once the basics are running.