The spreadsheet had been quietly wrong for a year

Short summary

A consulting anecdote about a landscaping company whose monthly profit spreadsheet had been silently overstating crew margins for a year due to an inherited formula error. The owner resisted full automation, arguing that manually assembling the numbers forces him to actually read and notice anomalies. The piece argues for automating data gathering while preserving the human judgment step—though manual sheets carry their own accuracy risks.

• •Inherited spreadsheet formula quietly overstated crew profits for a year
• •Owner argues manual assembly forces valuable business review—automation would eliminate noticing
• •Proposed split: automate gathering, keep human reading, but manual sheets have their own error risks

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.