You have called all your team members and you feel like your roster is in a great place. Candidates have also began registering and your team members are eager to start praying for each one by name. What does your leadership team do? Usually, they would run for the Excel spreadsheet. Not a good idea. Here’s the problem with Excel.  Anytime you make an update to your copy, it has to be emailed back out to your team. Your team is either constantly getting emails or the spreadsheet is outdated. Only someone who has written over 40 candidate letters knows the pain of having to toss a letter because the candidate dropped, and you were the last to know. Fortunately, there is an easier solution – Google Sheets. Google utilizes much of the same technology and functionality as Excel, but with one big difference – it is hosted online. In laymen’s terms – any change you make is automatically updated with everyone who can access that file. In conjunction with 25 Days of Community Giving, this week we will feature all the ways that you can start using Google Sheets and get away from outdated Excel.

1. Share Your Candidate Roster

Not only does JotForm (online application form) allow you to automatically integrate your forms with Google Sheets, but you can also allow anyone in your community to make changes to your spreadsheets or just view them. Simply create a link by clicking “SHARE” in the upper right-hand corner of your Google Sheet and your form can be shared with anyone you want. No more old Excel spreadsheets.

2. Send Out Your Team Roster

You started building your team roster in Excel and now you want to share it with the rest of your team…no problem! Simply copy and paste your Excel sheet into Google Sheets and you are good to go! Have your Head Team send out your roster link through email and no one will be emailing you for the roster again!

3. Share Food Sign-ups

Each community does things differently, but whether it is a secuela or send-off meal, an updated food sign-up list is an essential. Many times, though, people don’t bring what they are assigned, or it can be hard to plan when you don’t know what others are bringing. Create your food sign-up in JotForm and then integrate it with Google Sheets. Then your community can see what others have signed up for.

4. Create Your Prayer Wheel

You know how to make a prayer wheel in Jotform and now you can share it live with your Heads that make the wheel. Bonus – being in Sheets makes it so much easier for a mail merge.

5. Track Your Payments

Many hands go into the planning of a weekend including those that track the monies coming in and out. Create a spreadsheet in Google Sheets with all of your team and candidate names – then allow others to make changes. Money is being handed to your leadership team, collected online and checks being mailed. If you make your sheet sharable, it will save you many headaches trying to track down who paid for what. Stay tuned this week for a deeper dive into how to create each instance of these sheets and integrate with your JotForm forms.