Distributed Spreadsheet works by assigning users as “Contributors” to worksheets within a workbook.  Let’s assume the workbook in question had a total of 25 worksheets.  There are 20 employees who will act as Contributors and each has been assigned a unique page within the workbook (it is permitted to assign a single user to multiple worksheets if necessary.  It is not recommended to assign multiple users to the same worksheet).  All of the 25 employees receive their worksheet(s) via e-mail and modify the content of their assigned worksheet.  The completed worksheets are all returned.

The Distributor now has the option of merging the updated worksheets into the original workbook, viewing the individual worksheets as received or merging only a selected few of the overall worksheets received.  If the Distributor desires to merge all of the received worksheets, the merge limit of 12 contributions is imposed.  These 12 can be any 12 received contributions the Distributor desires to merge.  It does not matter if each of the 12 Contributors received multiple worksheets as part of the initial request.  What matters is that no more than 12 received contributions is merged.

In many cases, the 12-merge limit is of no concern.  Unless there is a summary or roll-up worksheet through which totals across all the worksheets is being generated, the need to merge everything together is not so vital as to be a show stopper.  The worksheets received from each Contributor can be viewed individually and groups of 12 can be merged as separate actions if necessary.  It all comes down to how Distributed Spreadsheet is being used.  

If you have questions about this application of Distributed Spreadsheet, please drop a note to info@distributedspreadsheet.com.

No.  Distributed Spreadsheet retains all of the capabilities of Microsoft Excel while enabling multi-user convenience.  Features such as macros, cell protection, VBA scripts, Pivot tables and others work as expected.  

If you have questions about this application of Distributed Spreadsheet, please drop a note to info@distributedspreadsheet.com.

So what will $20 buy if not a license of Distributed Spreadsheet?

$20 is the price of 1 small meal in any major city in the US…..before the bar tab.  Is it worth 1 meal?

$20 is the price of a small round of drinks in most bars during normal business hours.  Is it worth 1 round?

$20 is the value of the 20 minutes of time for an average executive.  Is it worth 20 minutes of your time?

Yes, we made a pricing decision a long time ago to require everyone to possess a valid license in order to be a participant.  Today, we still feel the value is more than fair.

If you have questions about this application of Distributed Spreadsheet, please drop a note to info@distributedspreadsheet.com.

Distributed Spreadsheet met the requirements and a sample of the resulting workbook can be downloaded from the Community Forum section of the Distributed Spreadsheet web site. 

Using a variety of Excel features, a worksheet was created that provided drop-down boxes for selecting products sold or needing to be ordered.  Names of accounts were selected from drop downs menus.  Costs of orders were quickly calculated in order for the store owner to be able to immediately approve the order.  Extensive use of comments helps guide users as to what information needs to be collected.

Installing Distributed Spreadsheet allowed the route manager to collect the inventory and order information 1 store at a time and forward this information back to the home office at the end of each week with 2 simple mouse clicks. 

Looking at the alternative methods of capturing the customer’s information, Distributed Spreadsheet was easily the lowest cost alternative while also bringing the lowest cost of implementation and lowest impact to the data communications budget. 

If you have questions about this application of Distributed Spreadsheet, please drop a note to info@distributedspreadsheet.com.

Thus a large, international company could perhaps produce a quarterly financial report with a single worksheet for each agent’s territory with a summary page for each region and possibly other levels of roll-up. 

The territory manager is assigned as a Contributor for their respective worksheet.  The area manager is assigned as a Contributor for all the territory manager’s worksheets.  The regional manager is assigned as a Contributor for all the summary pages assigned to each area manager in the region.  This continues on up through the management hierarchy. 

As there is no need for updates to be coming back via the worksheets, the v1.0 limit of 12 Contributors per worksheet is not applicable.  The limit of 12 applies only to cases where merging of Contributions is needed.  Thus Distributed Spreadsheet provides an easy and secure way to sending out individual worksheets containing the very data upon which financial models are built.  Once received, the recipient is able to save the file and then proceed to do any modeling they desire. 

If you have questions about this application of Distributed Spreadsheet, please drop a note to info@distributedspreadsheet.com.

That is what a property management company is Phoenix is doing.  Using Distributed Spreadsheet, a team of 8 are overseeing the process of simultaneously bringing up multiple franchise sites for multiple franchise companies and tracking all of it through a large Excel Workbook.

The setup of the workbook started out as a listing of the major milestones for a single, generic site location and build project.  As the team worked through the initial tracking process, the worksheet became worksheets and were changed to add greater levels of details through breaking the milestones into smaller and smaller distinct steps.  Each individual site is now a separate worksheet in the workbook and each worksheet is assigned to a single site manager.  Each Monday, the site managers receive an e-mail containing their worksheets as last submitted.  Each site manager is responsible for returning the updated worksheets on Friday. This may mean updating between 3 and 8 worksheets each.  Distributed Spreadsheet allows for the executives to view the status of all projects on the following Monday after the worksheets are merged back into the master. 

Embedding target dates for specific milestones into the workbook allows for comparisons of target to actual.  Actuals that exceed targets are automatically highlighted.  Comments from site managers are included thus explanations regarding reasons for slipping dates can be included.

By sending out the worksheets for updating on a weekly basis, progress can be easily tracked as each week’s reports are separate submissions thus avoiding overwriting last week’s submission with this week’s submission.  Tracking who has sent in their weekly reports is also easy to track through the Analysis Center.

Providing reports to the franchise corporate office has also been streamlined.  By building a summary page that reflects the status of the individual franchise location sheets, monthly reports to the corporate office are facilitated by adding the corporate contact as a “Contributor” for a single distribution.  On the first Monday of the month, the additional Contributor is added, the worksheets distributed and the additional Contributor is removed.  The $20 for a software license at the franchise corporate office is very inexpensive relative to the time saved. 

Thus, this usage model combines traditional distribution and contribution along with a one-way push of the summary page. 

I have often been asked if a single workbook was the only option or could a workbook be created for each franchise.  The answer is whatever works best.  Depending upon the number of franchise operations, the number of site managers and overall organization structure, one model may be better suited than the other.  Perhaps a mixture of the 2 models is ideal.  The beauty of Excel is that changing the model is very easy to accomplish.

If you have questions about this application of Distributed Spreadsheet, please drop a note to info@distributedspreadsheet.com. 

Mark Ryan