The Spreadsheet Emergency Plan: The Minimum Viable ERP

Direct answer. For a single-site client with a small team and no IT department, a maintained workbook plus a shared folder is a real Emergency Readiness Plan — not a consolation prize. A living spreadsheet beats an abandoned platform every time.

This is the build chapter for the smallest doors. You are not selling software. You are leaving the night engineer something they can open at 2 a.m. without a login ticket, a forgotten password, or a vendor who quit.

When the spreadsheet is the right answer

Use one workbook when all of the following are true.

One building, or one campus that shares the same shut-offs and the same on-call people.
A small facilities or management team — people who already live in email and sheets, not in a systems roadmap.
No IT department that will provision roles, SSO, or a portal for a binder that used to sit on a shelf.
The account relationship is early: you are proving you know the building before anyone will fund a heavier stack.

Skip the spreadsheet when you already know the client will outgrow it in months — multi-site portfolios, layered approval trees, or a corporate risk team that needs audit trails across dozens of doors. For those accounts, start where they already work (their Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace), not in a tool they did not ask for.

The ERP is property intelligence: who to call, what to shut, who else to bring, how to get in, and what happened last time. The Emergency Response Agreement is the contract that puts you first on the call sheet. Do not confuse the two. The sheet does not replace an ERA. It makes the walkthrough useful the night the pipe opens.

The workbook design

One file. Five tabs. No orphan sheets named “Final_v3_USE_THIS.”

Contacts / comm tree

Columns that earn their keep:

Role (GM, chief engineer, night manager, corporate risk, answering service)
Name
Primary phone
Backup phone
Email
Call order (1, 2, 3…)
After-hours? (Yes/No)
Notes (language, gate codes holder, “text before call”)

Why: at loss time nobody wants a directory. They want sequence. Put your restoration after-hours line on this tab in the order the property agreed to — not buried in a footer.

Shut-offs and building systems

System (domestic water main, fire sprinkler, gas, electrical main, HVAC, elevator recall, fire panel)
Location (room, wall, nearest landmark a stranger can find)
How to operate (valve direction, panel label, tool needed)
Who is authorized
Photo filename (exact match to the companion folder)
Last verified date
Verified by

Why: a shut-off without a photo and a date is a rumor. The filename link is what turns the sheet into a field tool.

Vendors and agreements

Trade (plumber, electrician, roofer, restoration, security, waste)
Company
Primary contact and phone
After-hours phone
Agreement on file? (Yes/No) and folder path or filename
Insurance cert expiration (date only — no commentary essays)
Notes (account number, PO required, preferred tech)

Why: the ERP is useless if the only number on it is yours and the building also needs a plumber who already knows the riser.

Equipment and access

Item (roof hatch key, fire-panel key, boiler room, gate fob, spare hydrant wrench, moisture meter kit location if they keep one on site)
Where it lives
Who holds spares
Access instructions
Photo / floor-plan reference

Why: crews lose the first hour hunting keys. Document access like you document water.

Loss log

Date/time discovered
Date/time reported
Area affected
Suspected source
Category note (preliminary — facts only)
Who was called, in what order
Vendor(s) on site
Photos folder name
Outcome / open items
Follow-up date

Why: the log is how the next loss gets smarter. It is also what the FM can hand ownership at a QBR without inventing history. See also how facility managers choose a restoration vendor — a clean file beats a charming pitch.

Keep formatting boring: freeze the header row, one date format everywhere, phone numbers as text so leading zeros survive, and a cover tab with property address, workbook owner, and “last full review” date.

The companion folder

The workbook points. The folder proves.

Minimum contents:

Photos of every shut-off and panel face, shot wide enough to show the room landmark, then tight on the label
Scanned agreements and certs (PDF)
Floor plans or marked egress / riser sketches the engineer will actually use
One PDF export of the workbook for offline phones that choke on the live file

Naming rule that survives 2 a.m.:

SiteCode_System_Location_YYYY-MM-DD.ext

Examples in words, not decoration: RIV01_WaterMain_BoilerRoomNorth_2026-03-15.jpg — RIV01_ERA_Signed_2026-01-10.pdf — RIV01_FloorPlan_Level1_MarkedShutoffs_2026-03-15.pdf

Same SiteCode in the workbook header and every filename. No “IMG_2841.” No “scan final NEW.” If the night manager cannot sort alphabetical and land on water in three seconds, rename until they can.

Store the folder where the client already shares files — a Google Shared Drive or a SharePoint document library — with access for the people on the comm tree. Your company may keep a copy for service, but the client must own the working set. If only you can open it, it is not their ERP.

Ownership, copies, and update rhythm

Name one human as file owner: usually the chief engineer or the on-site facilities lead. Your commercial contact co-owns the review calendar, not the password myth of “everyone has it.”

Where copies live:

Live file and folder in the client’s shared drive or SharePoint library
One offline PDF in that same folder
One printed binder on site — chief engineer’s office (or the facilities office if there is no engineer), on the shelf nearest the desk phone they actually use after hours — not in a marketing closet and not in your truck only

Update rhythm:

Touch contacts the week anyone leaves or changes phones
Re-walk shut-offs and refresh photos at least annually, and after any renovation that moves a valve or panel
Review vendors when a cert date is inside ninety days or a preferred contractor changes
Add every significant incident to the loss log before the job closes

An outdated ERP is worse than none. It sends people to the wrong valve with confidence. Calendar the review like a fire-extinguisher check, not like a newsletter.

Where this stack strains

Be honest with the client — and with yourself.

The spreadsheet strains when three people edit at once and nobody agrees which tab is truth. It strains when photos pile up unnamed. It strains when the printed binder is six months behind the drive. It strains when the account grows from one building to a corridor and the “one file” becomes twelve copies with different phone numbers. It cannot do automated expiration alerts, role-based permissions across a corporate tenant, or a mobile experience for dozens of roaming managers the way a purpose-built process inside their existing stack can.

Those failure modes are maintenance failures first, software second. If they will not keep a sheet current, they will not keep a portal current either. Do not “solve” neglect by selling complexity.

The honest ceiling — and what to graduate to

Graduate when any of these show up and stay:

Multiple sites with different shut-offs and different on-call trees
A need for permissions, shared ownership across departments, or audit-friendly version history as a normal week, not a special request
Leadership asking for lists, alerts, and one place that is not “email me the Excel”

Graduate into the client’s own Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace — never into your proprietary tool as the system of record.

Practical landing zones:

Google Sheets + Google Shared Drives for the same tab model, with Shared Drive permissions as the access map
Excel in SharePoint document libraries or Teams files, with Microsoft Lists if they want a lighter list view for contacts or vendors without abandoning the Microsoft tenant they already pay for

You may help them structure it. You may keep a service copy. You do not hold their emergency brain hostage inside a product only your company administers. The ERP as a sales motion works because the property gets a usable packet — not because you manufactured lock-in.

Minimum viable ERP means the smallest system that still works when water is on the floor. For the smallest clients, that system is one well-built spreadsheet, one named folder, one printed binder in the engineer’s office, and a review date someone owns. Maintain those. Then graduate on evidence, not on a demo.

Questions

Is a spreadsheet really enough for a commercial ERP? For a single site with a small team and no IT department, yes — if the five tabs are complete, the photos match the filenames, and someone owns the review date.

Where should the printed copy live? In the chief engineer’s or facilities office, on the shelf by the desk phone used after hours — not in a lobby brochure rack and not only in the restoration contractor’s truck.

What do we graduate to when one building becomes many? The client’s own Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace stack — SharePoint document libraries, Teams, Microsoft Lists, Google Shared Drives, Google Sheets — structured like the workbook, owned by them.

Should the spreadsheet include pre-authorization dollar amounts? Only if the property and their counsel already agreed in writing. The sheet can point to the signed agreement in the folder; it should not invent authority the ERA never gave.

What is the fastest way to fail this system? Duplicate files, unnamed photos, and no loss log. Fix naming and ownership before you add another tool.

Learn the stack

Official training for the spreadsheet tools in this build — free, from the source: