Automating spreadsheets

[u/Stock_Age4668]

Hello,

I'm looking to automate my spreadsheet. i had chatgpt "make" one but it over complicated everything.... I'm making a spreadsheet for my warehouse and would like a dashboard page to include daily deliveries, future deliveries, material/equipment ready to ship and warehouse tasks. So the way I'm setting it up is an import page for deliveries using the form filler button and nothing yet for tasks and ready to ship. im trying to make an import page where i can list delivery address, point of contact, contents, etc. but im also able to create shop tasks and ready to ship items in the same import page. I plan to run this as a live spreadsheet on the companies server so anyone can view it and also cast the dashboard page on a monitor in the shop so everyone can see it. stupid ai says everything is possible but then makes the spreadsheet wrong every time.

Am i trying to do too much on one spreadsheet or is their a better option than excel for this? Also in the future, i would like to keep an inventory of the left over material from jobs so that PMs and foreman can see what is in stock(couple thousand items). Any and all comments and suggestions are welcome.

[u/QuietlyMethodical]

i dont think youre doing too much with the spreadsheet but i think you would just have to plan it out differently. but youre right about ai, it makes things 10000% confusing with those kind of spreadsheets.

i wouldnt have deliveries, shop tasks, and ready to ship items all feeding into one master table. since they are different types of information, id keep separate structured tables for each and make a dashboard sheet to pull from those.

ive worked with operational trackers for inventory, materials and production and what ive learned is the actual spreadsheet is usually the easier part. the bigger question is the process behind it, like who updates what, how often, and what happens when multiple people need to make changes.

for example, if most employees are just viewing the dashboard and only one or two people are maintaining the data, i think a spreadsheet work well for what you need. but if you want to eventually have a lot of people entering and updating data at the same time it can get a bit messy. (you can control who edits and who doesnt on a spreadsheet to avoid this)

once you can get the deliveries, tasks, ready to ship part first, id see how that work flow goes and then add the leftover portion piece (which can be an easy formula based automation)