A spreadsheet works until it doesn't.
At ten subscriptions a sheet is fine. By forty it is a part-time job. By a hundred it is wrong more often than it is right — and it still cannot see usage. This page is the structural argument for when the math stops working.
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✦ What spreadsheets do well
Familiar, flexible, free.
No sneer here. Spreadsheets are the right answer for a lot of teams. We built our first prototype in one.
They cost nothing in software. They are infinitely customizable. Every operator already knows how to use them. For a small team tracking ten or twelve recurring subscriptions, a sheet is genuinely the most efficient tool — and any vendor telling you otherwise is selling.
What changes is the relationship between stack size, labor, and data quality. The bigger your stack gets, the more time the sheet eats and the less accurate it becomes. That tradeoff has a crossover point. The rest of this page is about where that point usually sits.
✦ The structural problem
Labor scales linearly, value flattens.
A typical mid-sized stack consumes 20–40 hours/month of finance or IT time to maintain in a sheet. At industry rates that is a four-figure monthly cost — for data that still has no usage signal.
- Gathering invoice and billing data
- 8–12 hrs
- Updating spreadsheet entries
- 4–8 hrs
- Reconciling discrepancies
- 3–6 hrs
- Creating reports and summaries
- 3–5 hrs
- Checking for new or changed subscriptions
- 2–4 hrs
- total each month
- 20–35+ hrs
Time ranges drawn from finance/IT industry surveys on SaaS administration burden in mid-sized stacks. Your numbers will vary.
✦ Where Efficyon is different
Same data, without the labor.
Direct accounting integration plus usage signals from connected tools — the parts a sheet structurally cannot have.
- Software cost
- Efficyon$39 – $119/mo
- SpreadsheetFree
- Labor cost
- EfficyonMinutes/week to review
- Spreadsheet20–40 hrs/month at typical industry rates
- Data freshness
- EfficyonContinuous, automated
- SpreadsheetWhenever someone last updated it
- Usage data
- EfficyonDirect from connected tools
- SpreadsheetNone — payments only
- Recommendations
- EfficyonAI-prioritized actions with dollar amounts
- SpreadsheetWhatever a human spots
- Renewal alerts
- EfficyonAutomatic
- SpreadsheetManual calendar entries that lapse
- Scales with stack size
- EfficyonYes — labor stays flat
- SpreadsheetNo — labor grows linearly
✦ When to switch
The signals that tell you it's time.
- More than 10–15 SaaS subscriptions live in your stack.
- Monthly SaaS spend has crossed roughly $5,000.
- You have missed at least one renewal — or paid for something nobody used.
- Someone is spending five-plus hours a month maintaining the sheet.
- You cannot answer 'what do we spend on SaaS?' in under five minutes.
- Different departments are buying overlapping tools without anyone noticing.
- You suspect — but cannot prove — there are seats no one is using.
- Stack size is growing faster than your sheet's update cadence.
If two or more of those resonate, the labor cost of the sheet is almost certainly higher than the monthly fee of any dedicated tool — including ones priced well above ours.
✦ Frequently asked
The honest version.
- How much time does spreadsheet tracking really take?
- Industry surveys put it at 20–40 hours per month for a mid-sized stack. At typical finance/IT rates, that translates to four-figure monthly labor cost — usually distributed across one or two people who would rather be doing something else.
- Why are spreadsheets inaccurate?
- They are only as fresh as the last manual update. They cannot see usage. They cannot detect new subscriptions. Manual entry has a 1–5% error rate that compounds across hundreds of cells.
- When should we switch?
- When you have more than 10–15 subscriptions, when monthly SaaS spend crosses ~$5,000, when you have missed a renewal, or when someone is spending more than five hours a month on the sheet.
- What can a dedicated tool find that we can't?
- Usage patterns showing underutilised licenses, overlapping tools doing the same job, tier mismatches, mid-cycle pricing changes, and recommendations with dollar amounts attached. Things a human can find given infinite time — but rarely does.
✦ Get started
Keep the sheet. Just stop maintaining it.
Efficyon is built so you can connect read-only, walk away, and check in once a month. Your spreadsheet stays — for the bits where it is genuinely better — but the work of keeping it accurate goes away.