Most one-person businesses arrive here from Excel, Google Sheets, Google Calendar, a notebook — or all four at once. This page is not trying to convince you — it gives you what you need to decide for yourself.
A spreadsheet works fine
Let us be honest: for plenty of situations, Excel or Google Sheets do the job, for free.
A spreadsheet is enough if:
- you have fewer than about twenty clients and you know them all by heart;
- your jobs are one-offs, with no follow-up and no chasing;
- you work from a desk, not from a van;
- you are the only person who ever opens the file.
If that is you, keep your spreadsheet. One more tool that solves nothing is one more tool that will not get used.
The four moments it starts costing you
1. You stop following up
This is the expensive one, by a distance. A spreadsheet never warns you. The quote you sent on the 12th sits in a row nobody re-reads, and the job goes to whoever picked up the phone.
A scheduled reminder turns an intention into a dated action. That is the only difference, and it is the one that pays.
2. You do not open it in the field
An Excel file, on a phone, between two jobs, with dirty hands: nobody does that. So the information gets noted somewhere else — a text, a scrap of paper, your memory — and it never reaches the file.
The spreadsheet is not wrong. It is simply missing half of what happened.
3. A client disputes what was agreed
A spreadsheet keeps no record of what you sent, or when. Three weeks later it is your word against theirs.
4. Your clients see nothing
A spreadsheet is private by construction. Your client has nothing to consult, nothing to confirm, nothing that reminds them you are organised.
What about Google Calendar?
It is the most widely used tool among tradespeople, and it deserves separate treatment: it is not a spreadsheet, it is a diary, and it fails for different reasons.
Google Calendar does one thing very well: tell you where you have to be tomorrow. It syncs across every device, it sends a notification, it is free.
What it does not do:
- It does not know your clients. An event has a title and an address. There is no client record: no second number, no billing address, no history. "Smith — quote" in March and "Smith — job" in June are two unrelated events.
- It chases nothing. A notification warns you about an upcoming appointment. Nothing reminds you about a quote you sent three weeks ago: there is no event for it, because nothing happened. That is exactly where the money is lost.
- It writes nothing to your client. A Google invitation looks like a Google invitation. It is not a professional confirmation, and it gives you no proof of what was agreed.
- It forgets the past. A diary is built to look forwards. Finding what you did at a client's place two years ago means scrolling back through months of boxes.
Should you drop it?
No. Keep it as your diary if that is your habit — for personal appointments, availability, sharing with a partner.
What ProContact adds is what a calendar structurally cannot carry: the client record that ties all those events together, the follow-up on things that have no event yet, and the written record of what was said.
One point of honesty: there is no Google Calendar sync yet. If you adopt ProContact, your appointments live there, and nothing flows automatically back into your Google calendar. For many people that is acceptable, because the confirmation goes to the client by email regardless. If you genuinely need both in sync, tell us — it is the request most likely to come up, and it will decide the roadmap.
What about Google Sheets?
Everything said above about spreadsheets applies, with two differences in its favour: it is reachable from a phone with nothing to install, and it shares easily.
Two differences against it, though:
- typing into a cell on a phone screen, on a job, is even more painful than in Excel;
- sharing is all-or-nothing: either the person sees the whole sheet, or nothing. You cannot show a client their own row without also showing them your rates and your other clients. The client portal exists for exactly that.
The three tools side by side
| Google Calendar | Excel / Google Sheets | ProContact | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Free | Free up to the quotas, then €19/month |
| Knowing where you are tomorrow | Yes | No | Yes |
| Client record tying jobs together | No | Build it yourself | Yes |
| Chasing a quote with no appointment | No | None | One-off or recurring |
| Confirmation to the client | Google invitation | Written by hand | Automatic email, with a copy to you |
| Proof of what was sent | No | None | A copy always lands in your inbox |
| Several addresses per client | No | Extra columns | Built in, with a main address |
| Client access | No | All or nothing | Secure portal, no password |
| Browsable history | Scroll back | Yes | Yes, per client record |
| GDPR | Your problem | Your problem | Consent requests with an evidence trail |
| Statistics | No | Build them yourself | Monthly trends and CSV export |
What a spreadsheet does better
Worth saying plainly:
- It is completely free-form. You invent your own columns. ProContact has a model: activities, contacts, appointments, reminders, notes. If your trade does not fit that shape, the spreadsheet wins.
- It calculates. ProContact does not do quotes, invoices or VAT. Plenty of independents keep a spreadsheet or an invoicing tool alongside, and that is entirely sensible.
- It is already there. Nothing to learn.
The question that actually decides it
It is not "which is the better tool". It is: how many jobs did you lose last year because nobody followed up?
If the answer is "none, I always chase", stay on your spreadsheet.
If the answer is "one or two, maybe more", the arithmetic is quick: a single recovered job covers several years of subscription.
Moving across
There is no bulk import from a spreadsheet yet — records are added from the app, in under a minute each. That is not ideal for 200 clients, but it is perfectly bearable for the 20 who actually matter.
The approach that works: do not import everything. Create your ten active clients, set their appointments and their follow-ups, and leave the rest in the spreadsheet as an archive. If you are still opening ProContact daily a month later, you will know what to do with the remainder.
Start with the 10-minute setup.