CheqqThe Cheqq alternative to Excel
A spreadsheet that fills itself, and still exports .xlsx.
Excel waits for someone to open it. Cheqq's sheets research their own columns, run on a schedule, act on what they find — and still hand you a real .xlsx when the thing you have to send is a spreadsheet.
What Excel is forThe most capable calculation tool ever built, and not close to replaceable. Excel is where financial models, ad-hoc analysis and forty years of institutional formula knowledge live — offline, on your machine, answering to nobody.
A workspace for the spreadsheets that stopped being calculations and became operations. Typed records instead of a grid, columns that fill themselves, workflows that run without anyone opening a file, and .xlsx out of the other end.
Why people start looking
Nothing here is a knock on Excel. These are the points at which one product stops being the right shape for the job, whichever product it is.
It only runs when you open it
A tracker is only current if somebody remembered. Everything the file is supposed to do waits on a person having a spare hour.
There are now four versions of it
final, final_v2, the one Priya has, and the one attached to an email in March. Nobody can say which is right, which means none of them is.
The judgement columns stay empty
No formula can research a supplier, read a sentiment or decide a category. Those columns are filled by a person, one row at a time, or not at all.
Sharing it means emailing it
The moment someone outside needs to see or submit something, the file gets sent — and the copy you were maintaining stops being the only one.
Cheqq vs Excel
Row by row, in plain terms. Where Excel is the stronger answer, the row says so.
ExcelFormula, lookup and rollup fields over typed records, plus sandboxed code in a workflow when a calculation gets serious.
Unmatched. Hundreds of functions, pivot tables, Power Query, solver, VBA and decades of accumulated technique.
Web-based; needs a connection.
A local file that opens on a plane and does not depend on anyone's service being up.
Describe the column and it runs on every row — researching the web with sources attached, scoring, classifying — priced before it runs, with your typed values protected.
Formulas compute from what is already in the workbook.
Schedules, webhooks, inbound email and record changes all start workflows. They run whether or not anyone opens anything.
Macros run when the workbook is open and someone triggers them.
One set of records that syncs live to everyone with access, with per-person views, roles, and a record of who last changed each row. There is no second copy to reconcile.
Files copy, fork and diverge, which is the nature of files.
Publish a form or a lookup page at its own address, restricted to the fields you list, without giving anyone the sheet.
Send the file, or a link to it.
Export a real .xlsx whenever the recipient needs a spreadsheet — the file is an output, not the system.
It is already an .xlsx.
The same records also generate decks, reports and dashboards — edited directly, versioned, and exported as .pptx or .docx without retyping a figure.
Charts reach PowerPoint by copy-paste, and drift the moment the sheet changes.
Based on each product's publicly documented capabilities. Both move fast — if something here is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
What you would build instead
Not features to evaluate — sentences you could type on your first afternoon, and what comes back.
| Supplier | Category | Spend YTD | Terms | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Halden Components | Hardware | £84,200 | Net 30 | Low |
| Brightpath Print | Packaging | £12,940 | Net 14 | Medium |
| Cormac Logistics | Freight | £46,110 | Net 45 | High |
| Vale Textiles | Materials | £31,760 | Net 30 | Low |
| Orrin Metals | Hardware | £9,480 | Prepay | Medium |
Ask for judgement, get it on every row.
Research the supplier, read the tone, work out the category, estimate the risk. Say what the column should contain and it fills the whole sheet, showing where each answer came from.
Stop being the reason it is up to date.
The file only reflects reality because you keep making it. Describe how it should stay current and that becomes a workflow — running nightly, on an email arriving, or the moment a record changes.
Keep the .xlsx. Lose the maintenance.
Your accountant wants a spreadsheet and that is fine. Export one on demand, formatted properly, from records that were current a second ago — instead of maintaining the file as the system itself.
When to stay with Excel
We would rather you picked the right tool than picked ours. These are the cases where Excel is the better answer.
- Modelling and analysisFinancial models, scenario analysis, anything where the formula grid is the thinking tool. Excel is the right instrument and Cheqq is not trying to replace it.
- You need it offlineA local file works with no connection and no dependency on a service. That is a genuine advantage, not a legacy detail.
- One-off calculationsIf the sheet exists for an afternoon and then stops mattering, building a system around it is the wrong amount of effort.
- Deep Microsoft 365 workflowsIf your organisation runs on Excel, Power BI and Power Automate together, that integration is tight and worth respecting.
Moving across, gradually
You do not have to switch in one go — most people run both for a while and let the Excel side shrink.
Upload the workbook
Cheqq reads the sheet, proposes a field type per column and lets you correct it. The rows become records with real types instead of formatted text.
Say what the empty columns were for
The ones nobody had time to fill. Describe them and they fill for the whole backlog, with sources you can check.
Give it a reason to run
A schedule, an inbox, a webhook. From then on the sheet is current because something keeps it current, not because you do.
Switching from Excel
Can I still export to Excel?
Yes — real .xlsx, along with .csv, and .pdf or .docx for reports. The file becomes something you produce on demand rather than the thing you maintain.
Do my formulas come across?
Formula, lookup and rollup fields cover most of what an operational tracker uses. Deep modelling with pivot tables, Power Query or VBA is Excel's territory and we would not pretend otherwise — plenty of people keep both.
Is this just an online spreadsheet?
No. Underneath it is typed records with relations, so a column can be a link to another table rather than a pasted value. That is what makes automations, permissions and published apps possible on top of it.
What if the team only knows Excel?
The grid view will look familiar, and the part that is new — describing what you want instead of building it — tends to be easier than the thing it replaces rather than harder.
Comparing something else?
vs SmartSuite
vs NocoDB
vs Teable
vs Google SheetsThe tracker that updates itself
Upload one workbook and describe the column nobody had time to fill. Free to start.
Start free