What do you use Google Sheets for?

We, extracttable.com, use Google Spreadsheets, a minimal, to save the signup via Google Forms which is also linked to an endpoint using the app scripts to generate an API key.

The biggest workflow I witnessed is from our user, a financial intelligence platform from Brazil, which initially takes data from images and do a manual entry to spreadsheets, has a significant pipeline with as many as 200+ macros defined for their business flow that takes down to close a final output of their clients need.

Prerelease: I planned for a Show HN post, next Tuesday, as we are yet to publish the below content in our site.

We have built a Spreadsheet Add-on (https://gsuite.google.com/marketplace/app/extracttable_image...) to aid their business process that extracts table data from images and puts into the spreadsheet.

Offer: For HN community, take 20% extra credits on your purchase with an email to apikey@extracttable.com with the subject "From HN."

I have so many Google Sheets.

I track my weight, running performance, workout progress, my spendings, savings, investment performance, car expenses, all trips out of the country (for visa purpose) and more.

Everything with fancy charts showing progress and how well I'm achieving my goals.

I'm using a Google Spreadsheet as a database backend for my portfolio. (https://andrefuchs.github.io/) I wanted a solution that is lightweight and easy to update.

A few things that I use it for: Pre-programed D&D stat trackers because it's free and Pathfinder is... complicated. Factorio base ratio calculations, and EvE online related market data. Quickly sharing database query output. A simple weight tracker.

Most of these things are and can be independent services, the issue is if I need something now that's ad hoc, then Sheets provides a computation sandbox in a format that most people are familiar with.

Currently, I use Google Sheets for tracking expenses and investments. There are two files, one for tracking expenses and the other is for investments.

I track my daily expenses in a sheet. A sheet is indicated the month and the year. Once I spend the money I input the expense soon to prevent from forgetting. It's simple. A table with a category expense, detail expense, and the amount. This is something that I want to do because this habit can make me understand how I spend my money. I mean do I appreciate the money?

For investments, a sheet is indicated a category of investments. Stocks, bonds, and mutual funds, for example. I also use a simple table to track what I buy or sell. By the way, Google Sheets has a GOOGLEFINANCE formula [0] that is very usefull for getting the price of a stock.

[0]: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093281?hl=fr

For a fun side project, I decided to use Google Sheets as a database that would be easily editable by the general public (non-developers).

It is currently populating data for a crowdsourced map of San Francisco Bay Area third-wave coffee roasters:

https://hdehal.github.io/coffee-maps

I was able to quickly get the app created in React, and while Google Sheets has extensive API docs (https://developers.google.com/sheets/api), I found it far easier to use the simplified Node.js wrapper from https://github.com/theoephraim/node-google-spreadsheet

On occasion, I'll get a friendly "request for access" with someone adding a roaster to the list (and the map gets populated automatically), so it's fairly hands-off.

I use it as a great way to share data from ad-hoc queries, and often times can drive a quick workflow without having to build out a full set of screens in our line of business app.

On a personal level, despite many attempts to find a perfect app, my relatively simple set of budgeting spreadsheets is still the best solution I've ever come up with.

Not Google Sheets, but the president of our company has been able to build out a new line of business app using Excel in a few weeks, something that would have taken use several months or more using our traditional development approaches (it will eventually be moved there for robustness, but using spreadsheets as a prototyping tool and letting those who understand the business hammer out the logic, before handing off to developers, is a great approach. A working spreadsheet is definitely the best requirements doc in the world)

To see an interesting use -- check out https://www.tillerhq.com/. An entire business built on top of google sheets.

Unfortunately, i didn't care for it (I didn't like the way they handled splits or the import from amazon)

I’ve got three files open right now. One is calculating contract rates based on hourly, weekly, and monthly contracts and various discounts. One is a list of RFPs, contacts for them, and their status. One is costing out a few options for a home office setup.

So a combination of lists and light calculations.

In the past I’ve also used them as awkward makeshift databases and leaned heavily on conditional formatting to highlight data points that required action.

I've tracked my wedding-related costs with my at-the-time-fiancee-and-now-wife.

Then we've used couple times it to calculate some monthly living costs and savings.

And the last time I've used it was for keeping track of all recruitment processes I've took part of (because over a week I've applied to like hundreds companies and it was difficult then to differ which company was offering what etc.)

"Let's build a product that is better than spreadsheets!" - 50% of founders of recently-failed B2B startups

Sorry for the joculariry, but having worked for such a company, I have a bit of amusement of how prevalent that idea is, and also how amazingly Teflon free spreadsheets are in comparison to so many of the more beautiful and usable paid alternatives (freemium things like Airtable aside)...

In my personal life, I use Google Sheets to help me shop for larger purchases. For example, choosing tires for my car. I made a spreadsheet of all the available tires that fit my car, with columns for specs, prices of different retailers, user review numbers, and government ratings. Then I filter what's important to me and calculate my own rating based on the remaining columns.

I recently used Google Sheets to create a simple list[0] of people who want to co-hack on projects.

[0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YKQ9g6h4BuWI32xcMbSM...

I use one sheet every day to track my time. It’s simple enough with 24 x 365 cells for each year’s sheet. It takes me around 30s a day to fill it out. It’s mostly guesstimating what I was doing during the day. It’s a fun way to look back on my week.

I honestly think this is one of the most impactful things I’ve done to reduce wasting my time.

Connecting APIs with Google Sheets for business intel and data analysis purposes using our tool https://apipheny.io

I track my workout progress in a sheet that is backing a google form. After every session, I enter the details from my phone. My priorities were: 1. not having to install yet another app; 2. not locking my data into a silo.

I've been using Google sheets to curate the remote jobs from many job sources. It's a really an easy database for me since I have limited database skills.

Also, Airtable for some cases and when it's relevant.

I use Sheets for personal data tracking, for content planning, for making quick financial projections, etc, etc, etc.

Would be easily top used tool for me if it wasn't blocked on the company level where I work.

Tracking shipping containers as they progress from supplier -> port -> ship(s)/port(s) -> port of discharge -> rail -> depot -> our warehouse and then returned to the depot.

My most recent spreadsheets are: Budget, Shared expenses, Catan Quarantine League, Metrics Dashboard, Talent List.

So a mix of personal finance, dashboards, and lists.

I used them to grade students, multiple teachers can edit the document at the same time and the grades are computed dynamically.

I track my budget in Sheets. I have some AWS Lambda functions that IFTT calls to update the sheets with new data

Budget and date night ideas are our two main used sheets

They fit perfectly on my Google Bed.