Shared spreadsheet and task management – Looking for more than just a solution for creating and managing spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are necessary to perform calculations almost in any project or activity within an organization. When you want to draw up a budget for a new project, sum up capital costs or perform payroll calculations, you usually use spreadsheets. If you need to share spreadsheet data, you can use shared spreadsheets. There are special software solutions that let you create and manage shared spreadsheets and shared work plans. Such software solutions allow creating a shared repository or a database where you can safely keep business information, including spreadsheets. Spreadsheet software solutions can be online and desktop-based.

Shared spreadsheet online editors allow connecting to a shared repository through Internet. They are recommended for people who use only primary functions (like creating, editing and sharing spreadsheet data) and who have no alterative to Internet-driven collaboration. An example of online shared spreadsheet editors is Google shared spreadsheet solution. Google offers free and simple tools to create and manage shared spreadsheets. If you have Google's account, you can try these tools.

Desktop-based spreadsheet software solutions allow creating and accessing shared repositories or databases through local area network. An example of desktop-based shared spreadsheet editors is MS Excel. Excel shared spreadsheets are convenient for financial calculations as Excel supports powerful data calculation features. You can perform almost any mathematical operation in cells and rows of Excel shared spreadsheets and create shared workbooks. But when it comes to managing and exchanging data, Excel shows shared spreadsheet problems, like poor performance and slow scrolling.

You have to wait until your computer opens a large Excel file and allows you scrolling down shared workbooks. Due to slow performance and insufficient data sharing capabilities, MS Excel is not so good shared repository, and using Excel shared work plans becomes stale.

When you manage shared spreadsheets, you may also need to manage tasks, and the idea to combine spreadsheets and tasks into a single solution brings you extra benefits to manage shared work. VIP Task Manager demonstrates how this idea can be realized.

VIP Task Manager is a multi-user task management program. It has powerful functionality to manage separate tasks, hierarchical todo lists, event schedules, and complex projects. Custom fields of VIP Task Manager allow turning a todo list into a spreadsheet that has customizable fields and where you can create and apply specific formulas. The software lets avoid shared spreadsheet problems related to user collaboration and data sharing since it uses capabilities of Firebird, a powerful client-server technology.

Read also a new article about process management - project management client-server software for Windows