By Hiran de Silva
Just a few hours ago, Mynda Treacy posted an excellent YouTube tutorial on building an inventory management spreadsheet — tracking goods in, goods out, and re-order levels. It’s beautifully presented, well explained, and perfect for a single-user or small-scale setup (in her example, three warehouses).
It reminded me of a challenge I set back in April 2024, which became known as The Reg Call Handler Challenge.
Here’s the scenario:
A company has a small warehouse stocking garments. There’s one call handler who takes orders and keeps a spreadsheet tracking what’s in stock — by size, colour, and product line. For this setup, one spreadsheet works perfectly. There’s a set of cascading dropdowns to get to current availability.
✅ One warehouse.
✅ One call handler.
✅ One spreadsheet.
Everything runs smoothly.
Then business takes off. 📈
Suddenly, there are 20 warehouses around the country and 50 call handlers taking orders across regions.
Now ask yourself:
How do you scale that simple spreadsheet so that all 50 call handlers can see up-to-date stock across 20 warehouses — without creating 20×50 = 1,000 linked workbooks or constant manual updates?
That was the challenge.
When I posted it last year, several respected voices in the Excel and FP&A community — Paul Barnhurst, Mark Proctor, Christopher T. Fennell, Jan Karel Pieterse, Tanya McIlravy, among others — said the same thing:
“That can’t be done in Excel.”
But can it? 😉
Here’s what I’ve learned over a long career building enterprise-scale Excel systems:
The true value of any spreadsheet solution is often measured by how many people say it can’t be done — and how prominent and adamant they are when they say it.
If someone on £5,000 a day says “impossible,” and you quietly make it work — that’s when you know you’re onto something special.
So here’s my question to the community again:
Can Excel scale an inventory system beyond the single-user model — and how would you do it?
🎥 You can watch Mynda’s excellent new video in the comments below.
🎬 And I’ve posted my original Reg Call Handler Challenge video below — the challenge that started a series. The Solution. The Explainer. And how to make money from learning why it works.
Let’s celebrate great learning and stretch our thinking about what Excel can really do when it’s used as an enterprise platform.
#Excel #InventoryManagement #PowerQuery #DigitalTransformation #FPandA #SpreadsheetReengineering #EnterpriseExcel
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