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Need help structuring a base (migrating from Excel)

  • January 6, 2022
  • 1 reply
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Hi there.

We use an excel spreadsheet to manage monthly sales targets for our partners/employees. In Excel we are able to put in targets by month/quarter and then also put in the actual data so we can understand target vs actual.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to structure my base to do this for the last week and I can’t seem to work it out.

We have periods of time that we need to track these figures (e.g. January, February, Q1 etc) but also within that we have different types of targets. So we have a software and a hardware target. But it also needs to be tracked per partner/employee.

Any ideas very welcome! Appreciate Airtable isn’t Excel but we use Airtable for everything in our business so we are trying to get this moved over as well.

Thanks
Dan

1 reply

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Hi @Daniel_Hamer,

This is understandable, as transitioning from a spreadsheet to a database isn’t always easy, given the fundamental differences. That said, it does seem like you are familiar with Airtable so I imagine your understanding of the software is sufficient for the migration. Often times, I find the biggest hangup on migrating from Excel to Airtable is the way data is structured in Excel, for any given user. Most Excel users do tend to structure information in a record-like format so migration is relatively straight forward. The catch will be if any information doesn’t follow that pattern (ie: doing calculations from one row to the next). For those situations, there are often ways to change a process so that Airtable becomes a good fit. I recommend trying to understand how and where the data you have in Excel could easily be copied over (its in a record-like format already where any cell is either independent or only depended on cells in the same row) and where it isn’t (ie: cell values might rely on cells in other rows or tables). From there, it can typically be identified where data needs to live (either same table or new/different table).

Below is a link to an Airtable support article that covers migrating from a spreadsheet to Airtable. Again, I assume you have a good knowledge of Airtable since you mention you use it in your post so take this link only as it is, a potentially helpful link.

I hope this helps. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

Thanks,
Chris

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