That old spreadsheet template from 2012 still runs my monthly reports

Been there so many times it hurts. My rule now is pretty simple: if a tool takes longer than the thing it's supposed to speed up, it's not actually a better tool, it's just newer. What I do is keep the old sheet as my source of truth and only pull it into the fancy dashboard for the parts clients actually look at, like charts and the summary page. Half the battle with those new tools is that nobody bothers to set up the import right, so you end up hand-typing numbers that the spreadsheet already knew how to grab. Twenty minutes versus two days is not even a close call, and nobody pays you extra for doing it the hard way. Old and ugly beats new and slow every single time.