Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#1

Post by nickgervasi » Wed, May 20, 2020, 7:03 PM UTC

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/.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#2

Post by dhruvkar » Wed, May 20, 2020, 7:37 PM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#3

Post by laurex » Wed, May 20, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

"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)...

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#4

Post by nickgervasi » Wed, May 20, 2020, 7:59 PM UTC

laurex wrote: post #3

"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?

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#5

Post by nickgervasi » Wed, May 20, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

dhruvkar wrote: post #2

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.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#6

Post by Chetane » Wed, May 20, 2020, 8:04 PM UTC

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

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

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#7

Post by rebelrexx858 » Wed, May 20, 2020, 8:27 PM UTC

Budget and date night ideas are our two main used sheets

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#8

Post by mooman219 » Wed, May 20, 2020, 8:54 PM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#9

Post by obviyus » Wed, May 20, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

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.

Re: Ask HN: What do you use Google Sheets for?

#10

Post by andrefuchs » Wed, May 20, 2020, 9:02 PM UTC

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.