Replace spreadsheets with a custom app
For the spreadsheet everyone is afraid to touch.
Job tracking, quoting, scheduling, inventory and intake that have outgrown a shared Excel file. JFI rebuilds them as a simple web app with proper logins, forms, history and reports, for businesses across BC.
- 01A fixed price for version one
- 02You own the code and the data
- 03Working software early, in stages
- 04Same business day reply
The spreadsheet started as a quick fix. Now the business runs on it.
One person knows how the formulas work. Two people edit it at once and someone’s changes disappear. The field crew can’t open it on a phone, a column got sorted on its own last month, and nobody is quite sure which copy is current.
None of that means the spreadsheet was a mistake. It means the process it holds has become important enough to deserve a proper tool. Replacing it is usually a smaller job than people expect.
What changes when the spreadsheet becomes an app.
Same information, same process. The difference is everything around it.
The shared spreadsheet
Flexible, familiar and fragile.
- Anyone can overwrite anything
- No record of who changed what, or when
- Hard to use on a phone in the field
- Copies emailed around, none of them current
- Reports rebuilt by hand every week
- One person holds the knowledge of how it works
A custom web app
Built around the way your people already work.
- Logins, with access matched to each role
- Full history on every record
- Mobile-friendly forms for the field
- One live copy, always current
- Reports and exports that build themselves
- Documented, so it doesn’t depend on one person
Spreadsheets we see most often.
If your business has one of these, it’s a good candidate. Most projects start with the one that causes the most pain.
- 01
Job and project tracking
Every job, its status, the crew on it, photos and notes from site, and what’s left to invoice.
- 02
Quoting and estimating
Price lists, margins and line items in one place, with quotes generated as clean PDFs instead of copied templates.
- 03
Scheduling and dispatch
Who is where and when, visible to the office and the field, without three versions of the calendar.
- 04
Inventory and equipment
Stock levels, tools and assets, who has them and when they’re due back or due for service.
- 05
Client intake and onboarding
Online forms that file their answers in the right place and start the next step automatically.
- 06
Approvals and sign-offs
Purchase requests, timesheets and change orders that go to the right person and leave a record.
Simple to use. Properly built underneath.
Apps run in the browser on a computer, tablet or phone, so there’s nothing to install. People sign in with their Microsoft 365 accounts where that fits, and see only what their role needs.
Your existing spreadsheet data comes across at launch, so nobody starts from a blank screen. Where it helps, the app also connects to your accounting, CRM or calendar, so information is entered once.
Connecting it to your other systemsBuild vs. buy, then a fixed-price first version.
Should you build at all?
Sometimes an off-the-shelf product already does the job, and it’s cheaper because someone else maintains it. Discovery is where we work that out. If the honest answer is a subscription you can buy today, we’ll tell you, and help you move onto it.
A fixed scope for the first version
When building is the right call, you get a written proposal: what the app will do, what it won’t, what it runs on and what it costs. The price doesn’t move unless the scope does. See how pricing works.
Working software early
A new app usually has a first usable version in four to eight weeks. You see it working as it comes together, in short cycles with regular demos, so feedback goes in while it’s still cheap to change.
Yours after launch
We train the people using it and hand over the documentation. You own the source code, the data and the accounts it runs on. JFI can host it, keep it updated and make changes as the business changes, but that’s optional, never required.
You deal with JFI directly, before and after launch.
The company that scopes and builds your software is the one you call when it needs a change or something stops working. No sales handoff, no account manager in the middle, no support desk that has never seen the code.
- 01
One point of contact, start to finish
The conversation that starts in discovery carries on through the build and after launch. You don’t re-explain your business to a project manager, then a developer, then a support desk.
- 02
Support from the company that wrote the code
When something needs fixing or changing, it comes back to JFI, which built it and wrote the documentation, not to a third party learning your system on your time.
- 03
Changes as the business changes
New fields, a new report, another integration. Small changes and bigger next stages are scoped and agreed with you before work starts.
- 04
Next to the rest of your IT
If JFI also looks after your IT, your software sits inside the same support: the same number to call and a first response the same business day.
Not locked in, either: you own the code, the data and the documentation. How JFI builds and supports custom software.
Related work JFI builds.
Most projects combine more than one of these. All of them are built on a fixed scope for the first version, and you own what we build. See all custom solutions.
AI assistants & automation
Assistants that answer from your own documents, email triage, first drafts and data pulled out of PDFs.
AI assistantsIntegrations & workflow automation
Microsoft 365, QuickBooks, your CRM and scheduling, talking to each other instead of through copy and paste.
IntegrationsCustom business dashboards
The numbers you check every week, pulled from the systems they live in and put on one screen.
DashboardsOur work
What we’ve built and run, including ReplyChamp, the AI review-reply product JFI built and operates.
See our workReplacing a spreadsheet, the short answers.
01When is it time to replace a spreadsheet with an app?
02Will we lose our existing data?
03Can people still export to Excel?
04How long does it take?
05What does it cost?
06Who owns the app?
Tell us about the spreadsheet.
What it tracks, who uses it and what keeps going wrong is enough to start. A screenshot can wait for the call. We’ll come back the same business day with a time to talk, or book a free scoping call directly.
- Hours
- 8am–5pm, 7 days a week
- Where we work
- Vancouver, Burnaby, Richmond, Surrey, New Westminster, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Delta, North Vancouver, Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows, Langley and Abbotsford. Remote support anywhere in BC.
- What clients say
- Read our reviews on Google ↗