The average office worker loses 20 hours a week to data entry and spreadsheet admin. That’s why there’s never been a better time in L&D to ditch the spreadsheets and move to a learning management system.
For lots of organisations, it’s common for staff to be chasing people for updates.
Hoping the version of the spreadsheet you’re looking at is the latest one.
Scrambling to pull a report together the moment an audit lands with no warning.
Files saved as v1, v2, v3, final and wondering which one is really the most up-to-date version.
It works, until it doesn’t. And for most organisations, that point comes sooner than you’d think.
That’s why it’s time to consider if spreadsheets are actually costing you even more than just time.
Keep reading to learn:
- Why spreadsheets end up handling tasks beyond their intended design
- Where the challenges show first
- Spreadsheet vs LMS, side by side
- What “replacing spreadsheets” actually means and what to look for instead
- How Totara with BuildEmpire handles it
⏰ TL;DR
Spreadsheets can’t keep up once your training data spans multiple teams, sites or compliance deadlines. You need real-time completion visibility, automated certification reminders and audit-ready reports, without extra admin. Totara with BuildEmpire does all three, and it’s built to flex around your existing systems rather than forcing you into someone else’s workflow.
Spreadsheets are doing jobs they weren’t built for
Most L&D teams know of a master tracker spreadsheet or are even still using one.
It started as a simple list.
Now it’s a tangle of tabs, conditional formatting and “final_v3” file names, and everyone’s terrified to touch it in case a formula breaks.
Spreadsheets are great for quick, one-off jobs, but they’re a poor fit for something that needs to update constantly, get pulled into an audit at short notice, and stay accurate across hundreds or thousands of people.
The BBC has called spreadsheets the ‘software that’s hard to quit‘. And for good reason.
Spreadsheets are used across the globe by small and large companies alike.
And the bigger the company, the bigger the risk you’re taking by relying on one for something as critical as compliance training.
The moment training data has to live in more than one place, spreadsheets stop being a tool. They become a liability.
Where the challenges show up
Most organisations don’t start with a dedicated training management system.
They start with a spreadsheet. And for a while, it works.
But as headcount grows, compliance requirements increase, and training programmes become more complex, the cracks start to show.
What was once a simple tracking tool becomes another manual process that consumes time, creates risk and limits visibility.
The common challenges are:
No one can see the full picture in real time
Training data ends up spread across multiple files, folders and versions.
One manager updates their copy. Another downloads a report. Someone else makes changes locally.
Before long, nobody is completely confident they’re looking at the latest information.
The problem isn’t just inconvenience.
Research by spreadsheet expert Raymond Panko found that 88% of spreadsheets contain errors, making manual tracking far less reliable than many organisations realise.
When you’re responsible for training records, certifications and compliance data, working from outdated or inaccurate information creates unnecessary risk.
Compliance deadlines get missed
Nobody deliberately ignores compliance requirements.
The reality is that when certifications, licences and mandatory training are tracked manually, deadlines can easily slip through the cracks.
A renewal date buried hundreds of rows down a spreadsheet doesn’t send reminders. It doesn’t notify managers. It doesn’t escalate risks.
As training requirements grow, keeping track of every deadline becomes harder.
The more people, courses and certifications involved, the more likely it becomes that something gets overlooked.
Sensitive data isn’t actually protected
Spreadsheets weren’t built with access control in mind.
Anyone with the file can open it, edit it or forward it on. There’s no way to give a manager visibility over just their team, or stop a contractor from seeing another department’s records.
And once it’s been emailed, downloaded or saved to someone’s desktop, you’ve lost track of where it’s ended up.
For regulated sectors especially, that’s not just messy. It’s a data protection risk.
If there’s ever a breach, or an auditor asks who accessed what and when, a spreadsheet has no answer.
💡 Pro tip
Security is built into Totara with BuildEmpire from day one, with role-based permissions and a full audit trail as standard. You control exactly who can see and edit what, and you’ve got the paper trail ready before an auditor ever has to ask for it.
Reporting turns into a project
Need an update for leadership or preparing for an audit?
Or even trying to understand completion rates across multiple teams?
What should be a quick report often turns into hours of manual work.
Data has to be gathered, checked, validated and formatted before anyone can make a decision.
Instead of spending time improving learning outcomes, L&D teams end up spending time building reports.
Different audiences need different views
Employees, contractors, franchise partners and external stakeholders rarely have the same training requirements.
Yet spreadsheets tend to treat everyone exactly the same.
The result is more manual administration, more workarounds and more complexity for the people responsible for managing training.
Personalised learning paths, audience-specific reporting and targeted compliance tracking quickly become difficult to manage at scale.
It doesn’t scale with the organisation
A spreadsheet might be manageable when you’re tracking training for 50 people.
But it’s a very different story when you’re responsible for 500, 1,000 or 5,000.
More people means more courses, more certifications, more reporting requirements and more administrative overhead.
The spreadsheet gets bigger, the process slows, and the risk rises.
Then eventually, the system that once worked becomes the thing holding the organisation back.
But do you want the good news? The good news is that these aren’t training problems. They’re process problems.
And with the right learning management system, they’re entirely avoidable.
How do spreadsheets compare to an LMS
| Spreadsheet | LMS with proper tracking | |
| Visibility | Manual updates, version conflicts | Real-time, one source of truth |
| Compliance reminders | Relies on someone remembering | Automated before expiry |
| Data security | Anyone with the file can see everything | Role-based permissions, full audit trail |
| Reporting | Hours per request, built by hand | Minutes, scheduled and exportable |
| Multiple audiences | One flat list for everyone | Separate views per group |
| Scaling | Breaks down past a few hundred people | Built to handle thousands |
Ultimately, a spreadsheet relies heavily on someone remembering to update it.
An LMS means you don’t need to rely on anyone’s memory, and it can automatically nudge with notifications when needed.
What does replacing spreadsheets actually mean, and what to look for instead?
Now we know replacing spreadsheets isn’t easy for everyone; there is historical data, processes and habits that have been built over time.
But moving could be the refresh you and your organisation truly need.
So when it comes down to it, what features are you missing that the spreadsheets can’t give you?
Here are some main features that are a great starting point to judge platforms by:
1. Reporting depth
This is so much more than a completion tick box. Reports that you can actually customise, schedule and export without needing a developer on standby will make everything quicker.
2. Compliance and certification workflows that run themselves
Reminders can actually be automated before a certification expires, and documentation can be audit-ready. No more forgetting anything important.
3. Flexibility across audiences
Employees, contracts, franchises, and more can all be tracked in one system.
All will have the right access and reporting capabilities. And the same goes for multi-tenancy too, so you can manage multiple brands under one system.
4. A setup that doesn’t need its own project team
While legacy platforms often require months of complex setup before delivering value, spreadsheets can feel like the path of least resistance.
💡 Pro Tip
Paired with BuildEmpire, Totara provides hands-on partner support—functioning as a seamless extension of your internal team so you do not burn valuable operational resources.
How Totara and BuildEmpire handle it
With Totara and BuildEmpire, you gain instant, real-time completion visibility, automated certification notifications, and audit-ready reports without wasting valuable hours.
Let’s dive into some of the features that Totara and BuildEmpire have that spreadsheets can’t handle:
Flexibility without fragility
Totara’s report builder lets you build the exact view you need.
That could be a live dashboard for a department or a report for an external auditor. No developer has to touch the underlying data structure to get there.
Certifications that chase people automatically
Totara treats certifications as distinct workflows, so nothing gets missed.
You have recertification periods and reminders built in. Renewal dates never get lost in a spreadsheet cell.
Audiences that are easy to manage
You can have multiple audiences based on rules you set. Each group will then get courses designed for them with the right reporting.
Related: What is personalised learning?
Dev and support-led
Every implementation comes with a team who will help you manage your LMS. So we can set it up and continue to support you along the way.
Scalable
And if you’re a large organisation, you can have an LMS that can manage it all. It’s built for complexity, so you can manage multiple brands and locations all under one roof.
Related: Multi-tenancy with BuildEmpire
Free migration
And you can get all this with free migration, so we can utilise the valuable data you do have in those spreadsheets and move it into its new home where it can be nurtured.
Related: LMS Migration: A complete guide to switching platforms
Ready to make the move from spreadsheets to an LMS?
If you’re ready to move from a manual, time-consuming process that you may find hard to quit, we can make it easy for you.
If your team is dealing with any of these red flags:
- Compliance dates slipping past unnoticed over the past 12 months
- Conflicting spreadsheet versions circulating, or audit documentation taking hours instead of moments
- Sensitive training or certification records sitting in a spreadsheet anyone can open, edit or forward on
Then it’s time to chat.
Book a demo, and we’ll show you how BuildEmpire can transform the way you work.
FAQs
What’s the biggest risk of tracking training in spreadsheets?
Missed compliance deadlines. Without automated reminders, a certification renewal date is just text in a cell until someone happens to notice it.
Can a proper LMS really replace all our spreadsheet reports?
Yes, and it should give you more than you had before: scheduled exports, live dashboards and audit-ready formats, without needing someone to rebuild the report from scratch each time.
We track more than just staff. Does that matter?
It does. You need a platform that separates and reports on different audiences (employees, contractors, partners) properly, rather than lumping everyone into one flat list.
How long does it take to move off spreadsheets onto a platform like Totara?
It depends on the complexity of what you’re tracking. A good implementation partner scopes this properly upfront, rather than leaving you to configure it yourself over months.
Is this only relevant for large enterprises?
No. Any organisation juggling multiple training audiences, regulatory requirements or sites will hit the same walls a spreadsheet has. Just sooner than a 5,000-person enterprise would.
How do I track employee training without spreadsheets?
Move to an LMS with certifications, audiences and reporting built in, rather than a generic document platform. You get automated reminders, real-time visibility and exportable reports, without adding admin work.
