Comparison
Matrix vs spreadsheets
What changes, concretely
| Dimension | Matrix | Spreadsheets |
|---|---|---|
| Who can see what | A named permission per screen and per report, granted through roles, plus per-project access — and the API checks it independently. | File- or sheet-level sharing, with separate copies where views need to differ. |
| Hours against a specific issue | Each Daily Status Report entry names the project and the issue, so effort rolls up on its own. | Project names typed by hand each week, matched up at month end. |
| Who changed this, and when | Field-level history on user records, an audit trail on issues, and a log of every email the system sent. | File-level version history, where it is enabled and the file was not copied. |
| Attendance data | Imported straight from the attendance device's own export, matched to employees, corrected in place. | The same export, reconciled by hand against a leave sheet each month. |
| Approvals | Leave application, approval, rejection and cancellation are records that notify the people involved and carry the approver's comments. | An email thread beside the sheet, visible to the people on it. |
| Several people at once | A database, where concurrent editing is the normal case. | Workable in a cloud sheet, with care over who edits which column. |
| Getting started | Create a workspace, invite your team, and set the catalogues that match your policy. Most teams run their first project through it the same week. | Already open on everyone's desktop, and familiar to all of them. |
The point where a workbook becomes the system of record
A spreadsheet holds up remarkably well for a small team. The shift happens quietly: the number of people who need a different view of the same data grows past the number who can safely edit it, and the copies appear — one for the client, one for finance, one somebody made in March.
From then on the reconciliation is the work, and the numbers different people quote are all slightly different.
The month-end test
The clearest signal is how long it takes to answer what a project cost. In Matrix that is a report: hours logged against real issues, rolled up per project and per person, sitting beside the client hours and monthly estimate the project was set up with.
Because every entry names an issue rather than a typed project name, the roll-up needs no mapping step and no cleanup pass.
What your team gets back
One place where a project's hours, its issues, the people on it and their leave all agree, because they are the same records. Reports that are current by construction. And an access model that shows each person exactly the part of the business they work in.
- Hours attached to an issue, not to a typed project name
- Approvals with a trail, not an email thread
- Attendance imported rather than transcribed
- Per-screen permissions instead of per-file sharing
Signs your team is ready to move
Spreadsheets are excellent analysis tools, and most teams keep using them for exactly that. The move is worth making when the workbook has quietly become the system of record instead.
- More than one person needs a different view of the same data
- Copies have appeared — one for the client, one for finance, one from March
- Answering what a project cost means opening several files and matching names by eye
- Approvals live in email threads only the people on them can find
- Month end takes a day of reconciliation before anyone trusts the numbers
Related
Daily Status Reports
The timesheet column, done properly
Attendance and leave
Importing rather than transcribing
For IT services companies
The whole month, end to end
Back to all comparisons.
See it with your own projects in it
Run one real engagement and one reporting cycle through Matrix. A month of your own data will tell you more than any comparison table.