Yet Another DBA (1/21/2014)
Chris, all applications will have errors, I haven't found one app that hasn't but still live in hope.I have heard that MS Access:
* has been used for years to provide the fuel calculations for an air fleet of a world leading airline.
* used to track the sales of $1 billion because it was more flexible than Oracle financials
Yes, neither of these is best practice and I know that a lot of IT pressure was made to get these changed. But the different IT departments could only promise a deadline that was months/year away which was unrealistic for the business operation and profit margin.
Absolutely all apps have errors, but if you run through a cycle, and you have version control, you can more easily find or prevent errors on changes. If you're adhoc in improving your Excel/Access solution, you could easily cause issues.
The fact that you track sales or fuel with anything for years doesn't mean it's correct. The airlines could be improperly calculating fuel, and it be on a scale that they consider to be waste or loss.
Does it matter then? Perhaps not. However, a wrong copy/paste of a cell or change or a formula could affect bonuses, sales reporting, etc. and easily covered up by a single person.
I'm not saying we shouldn't use Excel, but be aware of problems, and perhaps look for other solutions. Not throw up our hands and accept this. The solution certainly isn't an 8 week/month development cycle, but perhaps we can hook into Excel, write tests/checks, maybe even build auditing or warnings into add-ins. Possibly something else.