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Show HN: A simpler alternative to BI tools for Excel users
Hi HN,
Many small businesses run most of their operations in Excel.
Sales tracking, product lists, inventory, revenue reports — everything often ends up in spreadsheets.
The problem is that once the data grows, it becomes difficult to answer simple questions like:
What products actually make money?
Which categories are underperforming?
Where are we overstocked or understocked?
Traditional BI tools like Microsoft Power BI or Tableau Software are powerful, but for small teams they often require:
integrations
data modeling
dashboards to be built manually
I wanted something much simpler.
So I built a small tool where you can upload an Excel file and instantly get a business dashboard.
The system analyzes the spreadsheet and generates dashboards automatically showing things like:
sales performance
product performance
category trends
inventory signals (overstock / understock)
The idea is to remove the need to manually build dashboards or set up complex BI tools.
Instead of connecting databases or building reports, you just drop a spreadsheet and the dashboards are generated automatically.
The project is still early and I'm mostly trying to learn how people actually analyze spreadsheet data.
I'd love to hear how others here handle turning spreadsheet data into insights.
- skandersab 8mo agoHi HN — maker here. A bit more context on why I built this. I noticed that many small businesses still rely heavily on Excel to track things like sales, products, and inventory. But once the spreadsheet grows, answering simple questions becomes surprisingly difficult. For example: Which products are actually profitable? Where are we losing money? Which categories are growing or declining? Most BI tools solve this, but they often require integrations, data models, and manual dashboard building. My goal with this project was to make the process much simpler: upload a spreadsheet and instantly get a visual overview of the business. I'm still improving the product, so I'd really love feedback from people here, especially from those who deal with spreadsheets regularly. Curious to know: How do you currently analyze spreadsheet data? Do you build dashboards manually or use another tool? Happy to answer any questions.