A Friday Afternoon of Admin, Two Ways: Spreadsheets vs. Runsheet

Every Friday I do the same handful of jobs. Send each client an update on where their styles are. Check the costing on anything heading into production. Order trims before the factory asks where they are. Mark up the latest fit photos. Invoice for the hours. None of it is hard. It just eats the afternoon.

So I recorded one Friday's worth of that admin twice, side by side: once the way most of us still do it, with a Google Sheets tracker, Gmail and Canva, and once in Runsheet. Same clients, same styles, same week.

What's in the video

Five jobs, for two clients (SÔZ Studios and Marlowe & Finch):

1. Two client updates. Where every style is, what's late, what's next.
2. A costing check on the Pari Jacket: fabric, CMT, trims and fixed costs, down to a cost per unit.
3. A button order for that jacket, with quantities worked out from the size run.
4. A fit markup on the Theo Blazer's proto 2: shorten the sleeve 3/4" at the cuff, take in the hem 2".
5. An invoice for the 3-hour fit session, at $125 an hour.

Both sides stop before anything is sent.

Why I counted steps, not minutes

The obvious version of this video has a stopwatch on each side. I didn't do that, because a stopwatch measures how fast the person is, not how much work the tool makes you do. Anyone can slow down one side of a screen recording.

Instead, every beat in the video is one real step, recorded on screen, and the counters underneath only go up when something actually happens: a click, a word typed, an app opened, an inbox search, a formula written. You can pause on any frame and check it.

The numbers

Spreadsheet + Gmail + Canva:

• 3 apps
• 2 inbox searches
• 7 formulas
• 70 clicks
• 330 words typed by hand

Runsheet Pro-Studio:

• 1 app
• 0 inbox searches
• 0 formulas
• 30 clicks
• 24 words typed, and those are the fit notes and the hours, which only you know

The counters don't show the worst part, which is the time between the clicks: finding the right email, flipping back to the sheet for a date, checking the number you just retyped against the one in the other tab. That's where the afternoon actually goes, and no counter catches it.

And this was only two clients. On the spreadsheet side, every extra client is another round of the same loop. On the Runsheet side, the updates for every active client are drafted at once.

Where the extra work goes

Client updates

On the spreadsheet side, every update is the same loop: open the tracker, read each style's row, switch to Gmail, type the update, go back to the sheet for the next date. The two updates took 163 typed words, most of them copied by eye from one window to the other, plus two inbox searches to dig up the latest fit notes.

In Runsheet, Bobbin (the AI agent inside Runsheet) drafts an update for every active client from their styles in one go. You read each one and decide whether to send it.

Costing and the button order

The sheet needs seven formulas to get from yards, fabric price, CMT and trims to a cost per unit and a button quantity. Then the order email gets typed out from the sheet.

In Runsheet the costing already lives on the style, so the cost per unit and the order quantities are just there. Order from vendors groups the trims by your saved supplier and drafts the order.

The fit markup

In Canva: save the fit photo, start a new design, upload it, add a text box for each note, search for arrows, drag and angle each one, then download a PNG so you can attach it to an email. That's 20 clicks, and the markup now lives in your downloads folder.

In Runsheet: open the style, the fit photo is already on it, press Mark up, drop a callout on each spot and name the change. It's saved to the style, right where you'll look for it at the next fitting. There's nothing to download.

The invoice

In Canva: find last month's invoice, make a copy, then retype the number, the date, who it's billed to, the line item and the total, work out 3 × $125 in your head, delete last month's extra row, rewrite the notes and drag the total box back into place. That's 24 clicks and 38 words, with a typo in the date to fix along the way. Then you still have to download it and attach it to an email.

In Runsheet: log the hours on the client, press Create invoice, and the line item, rate and total are filled in from the time entry. It opens ready to save as a PDF.

"Can't I just use ChatGPT for this?"

Yes, ChatGPT can write the email. What it can't do is tell you what goes in it. It doesn't know the Pari Jacket is approved, that the Theo Blazer's sleeve needs to come up 3/4" at the cuff, or what the jacket costs per unit. You still have to dig that out of the sheet and your inbox, paste it in, copy the result into Gmail, and check it didn't invent a date along the way. That's a fourth app, not one fewer.

The difference in Runsheet isn't who types the words. It's where the facts come from. The statuses, costing, fit markups and hours already live in Runsheet, so Bobbin writes the update from your own data. There's nothing to gather and nothing to paste in.

Nothing sends until you say so

Every update, order and invoice email on the Runsheet side waits for you. Bobbin does the noticing, the remembering, the math and the first draft. You do the part that matters if it's wrong, which is deciding whether it goes out. That's on purpose: your client and factory relationships are the most valuable thing in the business, and no software should be emailing them on its own.

The short version

1. Same Friday admin, recorded twice: spreadsheet, Gmail and Canva vs. Runsheet.
2. Counted in real steps, not a stopwatch: 3 apps vs. 1, 7 formulas vs. 0, 70 clicks vs. 30.
3. The real cost is the time between the clicks, hunting for facts across tabs and inboxes, and it grows with every client.
4. ChatGPT can write the words, but you still have to find and paste in the facts. In Runsheet they're already on the style.
5. Markups and invoices are saved where they belong, not in your downloads folder.
6. Nothing sends until you say so.

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