What spreadsheets do well
Let's give Excel its due. It's free (effectively), infinitely flexible, and everyone already knows it. A disciplined sole broker with a tidy workbook (one tab of deals, one of commissions, a calculator on the side) runs a perfectly good business. No onboarding, no subscription, no vendor.
The honest advice, and we say this as a software company: if that's you, and it isn't hurting yet, you don't need us yet. Bookmark this page for the day one of the triggers below happens.
Where the costs hide
Spreadsheet costs don't arrive as invoices, which is why they're easy to ignore. They arrive as:
- Typing errors that surface weeks later. The same customer name goes into the quote, the proposal, the compliance letter and the funder portal. One "Ltd" that should be "Limited", one transposed serial digit, and the payout pack bounces long after anyone remembers typing it.
- Nobody knows which file is current. Two brokers, one book, "Deals_FINAL_v3_SG_edit.xlsx". The honest answer to "where's that deal up to?" lives in someone's head, and that person goes on holiday.
- Commission that never gets chased. The commission tab says £2,400 due from a November deal. Nobody opened the tab in December. It's March now.
- Deals that stall quietly. A deal approved sixteen days ago with no payout pack started. No spreadsheet will ever flag that. Software that understands deal states does.
- Audits answered from a folder of Word documents. Proving consistent commission disclosure across last year's deals, in the week the auditor asks for it.
The five triggers
In practice, brokerages move for one of five concrete reasons, usually after the second or third one lands in the same quarter:
- The book gets shared. Two or more people writing deals from one record. Versioning breaks first, accountability second.
- A missed commission becomes real money. The moment "we probably lose a bit to unchased payouts" gets a number attached, the software subscription looks cheap.
- A payout stalls on a mismatch. A funder bounces the pack over a detail the system would have caught at upload.
- Compliance scrutiny. Disclosure evidence, audit trails, consistent documentation: by hand it's possible; provably consistent is another matter.
- Volume. Somewhere past ten to fifteen deals a month per person, the re-keying hours alone outweigh the cost of software that types things once.
Side by side
| Dimension | Spreadsheets | Broker platform |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to start | Nothing | Subscription + onboarding time |
| Flexibility | Unlimited | Within what the product supports |
| One person, low volume | Fine | Overkill until it isn't |
| Shared team book | Version chaos | One record, live for everyone |
| Quoting accuracy | Depends who built the formula | Tested engine, funder rate cards |
| Stalled-deal visibility | Someone has to notice | States and ages are queryable |
| Payout pack checking | Manual reading | AI extraction + field checks |
| Commission reconciliation | A tab someone maintains | Expected vs received, per deal |
| Audit trail | File modified dates | Every change, who and when |
If you do move, move properly
Half-migrations are worse than no migration: the spreadsheet survives "just for commissions", and now there are two systems of record. Insist the vendor imports your book and your rate cards as part of onboarding, run the old and new in parallel for a month at most, then turn the spreadsheet read-only. What to look for in the software itself is covered in the buyer's guide; if you're weighing a generic CRM instead, read CRM for finance brokers first.
Frequently asked questions
When should a brokerage move off spreadsheets?
When the book is shared, a commission gets missed, a payout stalls on a mismatch, compliance asks for evidence, or answering "what are we owed?" takes an afternoon. Usually two of those arrive in the same quarter.
Are spreadsheets ever the right answer?
Yes. A disciplined sole broker at low volume runs fine on a tidy workbook. Software earns its keep with teams, volume and scrutiny.
What does broker software actually replace?
The rate-card spreadsheet, the pipeline spreadsheet, the commission tab, the Word templates and the inbox-as-filing-system. Customer data gets typed once and reused everywhere downstream.
How disruptive is switching?
Less than feared if done properly: the vendor imports your book and rate cards, you run parallel briefly, then the spreadsheet goes read-only. The real risk is the half-migration that leaves two systems of record.