Most small manufacturers track work orders in one shared spreadsheet. It is quick to start, everyone knows how to use it, and for a while it works. Then, little by little, it starts to tell you things that are not true. Nobody lies on purpose; the sheet just has no way to stop small mistakes from piling up.
Here are six ways that happens, and what you can do about each one today.
1. There is more than one "latest" copy
ORDERS_FINAL.xlsx, ORDERS_FINAL (2).xlsx, the one attached to last Tuesday's email, and the one on the planning PC. Each is somebody's truth. When two people update different copies, one of the updates is lost when the files are merged by hand.
What to do: keep exactly one file in a shared drive, and stop emailing attachments. Send a link instead.
2. Dates are typed as text
15.06.26, next week, TBD and 31/02/26 all look like dates to a person. To the spreadsheet, most of them are just words, so sorting by dispatch date puts orders in the wrong place, and an impossible date sits there quietly.
What to do: format the date columns as real dates and use data validation so only a date can be entered. Use a separate notes column for "next week".
3. Plan dates change without a trace
When the planned dispatch date moves, someone overwrites the cell. The old date and the reason it moved are gone. At the month-end review nobody can say whether an order slipped once by a week or four times by a few days, or why.
What to do: never overwrite a plan date silently. Add two columns, "previous plan date" and "reason for change", and fill them every time. Over a few months, the reasons tell you where delays really come from.
4. The same status is spelled five ways
Completed, complete, Done, DONE?? and an empty cell that everyone knows means done. A filter on "Completed" now hides real orders, and counts in the weekly meeting are wrong.
What to do: use a drop-down list for status with a fixed, short set of values, and agree what each one means: when exactly does an order move from Completed to Ready for Dispatch?
5. Merged cells and hidden rows break sorting
Merged headers make the sheet look tidy but stop sort and filter from working on the whole range. Hidden rows ("we will clean these up later") get skipped by some formulas and counted by others.
What to do: one header row, no merged cells inside the data, and no hidden rows. If something is finished, give it a status instead of hiding it.
6. Nobody owns a row
When everyone can edit everything, the most recent edit wins, even if it came from someone who did not know the full story. A copied row can create a duplicate order number that nobody notices until invoicing.
What to do: decide who updates which columns. Marketing owns the PO details, planning owns the plan date, dispatch owns the invoice columns. Check order numbers for duplicates every week.
What this adds up to
None of these problems is dramatic on its own, which is why they survive. Together they mean that the sheet you open on Monday morning is a little less true than it looks. Late orders hide behind wrong dates, and the reasons for delays are lost.
You can go a long way by fixing the six habits above in the spreadsheet you already have. If you find yourself writing rules that people have to remember, though, it may be time for a tool that enforces them for you: one list, real dates, a fixed set of statuses, and a history of every changed plan date with its reason. That is what we built Kramaline to do for small manufacturing teams.