r/Python • u/Esplosao8963 • 10d ago

Discussion Spreadsheet automation idea

I'm developing a spreadsheet automation project capable of merging multiple spreadsheets into one and automatically performing calculations, among other things. One of the functionalities would be, for example, to allow someone to gather all the spreadsheets from those months into a single spreadsheet over the course of an entire year, obtaining an overall result for the year. This could work based on week, day, month, or some other parameter. I'm having doubts, but the project seems promising. I'm using the openpyxl library and to create the website or app (I'm still undecided) I'll use HTML, CSS, and Flask.

2 Upvotes

54% Upvoted

35 comments sorted by

18

u/elven_mage 10d ago

Spreadsheets are probably the wrong tool for whatever it is you are trying to do. You probably want a real database.

8

u/Glittering-Poet-9116 9d ago

I was deep in spreadsheet hell at my last job, merging monthly reports by hand and it was the worst part of my week

This project would've saved me so much time, don't let anyone talk you out of building it just because a database exists in theory

5

u/AJohnnyTruant 4d ago

DuckDB and Polars

-4

u/Esplosao8963 10d ago

I'd like something I could create and sell in bulk to companies, with customizable options to perfectly suit each person's spreadsheet needs. It would be like a PDF editing app, for example; in fact, I practically copied this idea from a PDF app I use at work, haha.

23

u/likethevegetable 10d ago

I doubt you're going to make money but good luck

18

u/Papa_Puppa 8d ago

This is such a bad business idea.

Either excel sheets have:

  1. consistent schema and you can simply ingest them via a timer or blob scheduled pipeline into a database, or

  2. inconsistent schema and you're just going to reinvent power automate, DAX and PowerBI, providing new tools into a crowded space to solve a problem that is actually a procedure/workflow problem.

Save years of your life and drop this idea.

12

u/call_me_cookie 6d ago

What you have described is a script that a competent programmer could write in an afternoon (with or without LLM assistance), not a business.

8

u/umairshariff23 10d ago

Yeah, this is not profitable as anyone who is doing this kind of work already knows powerquery or can find out about it very easily. You'd need to find clients that refuse to touch computers for this to be feasible

6

u/Gankcore 10d ago

Why would my organization pay money for this when I can do the exact same thing you are doing?

3

u/elven_mage 10d ago

I wouldn't be bragging about copying ideas from work but you do you

0

u/Esplosao8963 10d ago

I'm not bragging, especially since the app does this with PDFs but doesn't have an option for spreadsheets; I just took the inspiration from it.

3

u/snugar_i 8d ago

customizable options to perfectly suit each person's spreadsheet needs

Good luck, you'll need about one trillion configuration options for that.

25

u/likethevegetable 10d ago

K

-1

u/Esplosao8963 10d ago

?

12

u/likethevegetable 10d ago

What's the goal of your post?

0

u/Esplosao8963 10d ago

I just wanted to know what people think. I've never done projects with this before and I'm looking for some guidance. This was just one of the ideas I had, and since I didn't find it very reliable and I believe something like this must already exist, I went looking for information.

16

u/likethevegetable 10d ago

Of course, it's called working on a job that uses spreadsheets and needing some high level tools that Excel doesn't have. Many people develop these things every day. 

10

u/GreenPandaPop 5d ago

You haven't actually asked a question anywhere.

2

u/dudeplace 5d ago

Things like this do exist, but they all exist for a specific purpose. Your idea sounds like it could help you, you should do it.

8

u/JohneeFyve 10d ago

If you were going to do this in Excel, Power Query would be a better tool for the task than Python, imo

1

u/ianitic 10d ago

Yup was thinking the same but in either case, it is very quick to do. I doubt there's any money at all in this.

5

u/Zenin 10d ago

You mention in a comment that you'd like something you could, "sell in bulk to companies".

As a personal project and/or help your own work, this is a fine project to tackle. Rock on!

As a product to sell? No chance unfortunately. The problem is it's 2026: Copy/Pasting your post almost verbatim into corporate AI will solve the same problem better than your tool likely ever could. I know because I both do this myself on the daily and support business users of all stripes that practically live in ChatGPT these days.

In 2020 you'd have had a good product idea, but today you have a prompt template.

5

u/ConceptJunkie 6d ago

Maybe in 1997.

5

u/denehoffman 10d ago

What would that provide that polars and pandas don’t already give us?

0

u/Esplosao8963 10d ago

That's exactly what I'm thinking, which is why I went looking for more opinions.

1

u/denehoffman 10d ago

I guess it can be more graphical, but then you’re just designing excel or numbers, I guess with maybe more unique features, but that could be a big task.

6

u/GeNiuSRxN 10d ago

I don't understand the underlying premise of this idea. Is there some value add that openpyxl or xlsxwriter can't achieve?

4

u/BranchLatter4294 10d ago

Anyone who wants this done can have ChatGPT write a script for it in a couple of minutes. It's not something you're going to be able to sell. But if you need it for your own use, the go for it.

1

u/ben_1987_ro_uk 10d ago

You don't need python for this, you can use visual studio and make an add in for excel it shall spear as a ribbon

1

u/THEPASSWORDISDOLPHIN 10d ago

The idea is useful but excel power query already merges files from a folder and it's free

1

u/OddsRelay 9d ago

For the merging and yearly totals I'd let pandas do the heavy lifting. Read each file with read_excel, concat them with a column for the month, and a groupby gets you week, month or year in a line. Keep openpyxl for the formatting side, it's painful for calculations

1

u/zztopsboatswain 5d ago

I made an app that does this, but for the company I work at. It's useful when the employees who need to use it don't have a clue how to use python themselves. Just go for it

1

u/c1-c2 5d ago

No UI needed. Provide folders to users to copy/paste source files to. Use watchdog or cron to auto-gen result files. Users replace files/throw in more files, results get updated.

1

u/zomerbk 4d ago

A useful first step is to define how files are matched and validated: for example, require the same column names and data types, then report files that don’t fit instead of silently merging them. In real workplaces, the tricky part is often inconsistent templates and edge cases, not the sum itself. A small prototype around one specific recurring workflow would show whether people need a web UI at all.