Switching from Excel
You don’t have to hate Excel to outgrow it
Excel is brilliant. It is flexible, familiar and still the right tool for plenty of things. But when your most important numbers live across fragile workbooks, month-end gets harder than it needs to be.
Why leave Excel?
Excel works. Until the process around it gets too big.
Every QS uses Excel for good reasons. It is flexible enough to handle almost anything, everyone knows how to use it, and you can see exactly how a number was calculated.
We are not trying to take that away.
iQuantifAI keeps the things that make Excel useful. Familiar, spreadsheet-style working. Calculations you can inspect. Data you can export back to Excel whenever you need it.
The problem is what happens around the spreadsheet as the business grows.
Month-end stress
CVRs assembled by hand from multiple sources, often late into the evening.
Files only one person understands
The workbook makes sense to the person who built it. Everyone else is trying to work out which tab to trust.
Small changes with big consequences
A formula gets dragged, a cell gets overwritten, or a lookup points at the wrong period. The problem only appears when the number is already being relied on.
No clear history
A figure changes, but it is difficult to see who changed it, when it changed, or why.
Version chaos
Every month end starts with working out which file to trust.
Excel itself is rarely the problem.
It is the process around Excel that becomes difficult to manage.
A different way to work
Move the work that benefits from being connected. Keep the tools that don't.
You do not need to replace everything to get the benefit of iQuantifAI.
Moves to iQuantifAI
CVRs
Built from live project data and locked as monthly snapshots.
Valuations and payment applications
Recorded against the underlying project data.
Subcontractor accounts
Orders, accounts and variations connected in one place.
Purchase orders and invoices
Including CIS, VAT and domestic reverse charge handling.
Approvals
A clear record of who approved what and when.
Stays where it is
Estimating and tendering
We deliberately do not do tendering. We pick up post-contract and work with the data your existing tools produce.
Your accounts package
We integrate with your accounts software rather than trying to replace it.
Excel
Keep using it for the analysis and one-off models where it is still the best tool. Your data can be exported back to Excel whenever you need it.
You are not replacing your whole technology stack. You are taking the parts that have outgrown Excel somewhere better.
How it works
Start small. Run it alongside Excel. Scale when you're ready.
You do not need a company-wide rollout or a six-month implementation project.
01
Bring your existing workbooks
Start with the files you already use. Our import process turns existing budgets, bills of quantities and files into structured project data.
You do not start again from a blank screen.
02
Start with one live project
Pick one project and one team. Run iQuantifAI alongside your existing process and compare the numbers.
If the numbers do not match, you will see it straight away. That is exactly how it should work.
03
Run your first month-end
The data is already there, so the CVR can be assembled without rebuilding the same information every month.
This is where the difference becomes tangible.
04
Add projects as you are ready
Once the process works on one project, add another. Then another.
No big-bang migration. No company-wide switch overnight. No need to wait for every project to be ready.
Start with one project. Bring your existing workbooks. Run iQuantifAI alongside Excel and switch at your own pace. Your data stays yours, and you can export it back to Excel whenever you need it.
Built for commercial teams
You should be able to see where the number came from.
One of the reasons QS teams are cautious about software is simple. Put numbers into a system, get a number out, and you are expected to trust what happened in between.
That is not how we think commercial software should work.
Every figure is traceable
Follow a number back to the document, invoice, order or valuation line behind it.
Calculations are inspectable
Standardised calculations, with the logic visible rather than hidden inside the software.
Changes have a history
See who changed something and when. No silent changes and no mystery versions.
Your data is yours
Export your data back to Excel whenever you need it. If you ever leave, you leave with your data.
The aim is not to make Excel disappear. It is to make the important numbers easier to trust.
Questions we get asked
We tried software before and ended up back in Excel.+
Usually because the software forced the team to work differently, took too long to implement, or hid the calculations.
We have taken a different approach. Familiar spreadsheet-style working, one project to start, and figures you can trace back to their source.
You do not need to take our word for it. Run it alongside your existing process and see how the numbers compare.
My team will not want to learn another system.+
There is no need for a long training programme before you can start.
The platform is designed around the way commercial teams already work, with familiar tables and workflows. Start with one project and build from there.
What happens to our data if we stop using iQuantifAI?+
It is yours.
You can export your data back to Excel. We would rather build a product you want to keep using than make it difficult to leave.
Is our commercial data safe?+
iQuantifAI uses encryption in transit and at rest, UK/EU hosting and a full audit trail.
See Security & data →How long does it take to get started?+
The first project can be imported and made live in days, not months.
The aim is to have your next month-end running on the platform, rather than spending months preparing for a future one.
Excel is cheap. Why would we pay for this?+
The licence is not usually the expensive part of Excel.
The cost is the process around it. The evenings spent assembling reports, checking figures, reconciling versions and finding out where a number came from.
iQuantifAI is designed to reduce that work.
See Pricing →Built in the real world
We did not build this from a software specification.
We built iQuantifAI alongside a live contractor, using real CVRs, real subcontract accounts and real month-ends.
The commercial team used it while we built it. That meant seeing where spreadsheets worked well, where they broke down, and what software needed to do differently.
We are now onboarding early-access firms.
The people answering your questions are the people building the product.
Bring your worst spreadsheet
The best way to judge iQuantifAI is on your own data. Bring your hardest CVR, show us how you work today, and we will show you what changes.