Peerdom vs Excel for Org Charts: Why Spreadsheets Fall Short

Excel is the default tool for almost everything. Budgets, project plans, headcount tracking, and yes, org charts. When someone at your organization first needed to document who reports to whom, the answer was almost certainly a spreadsheet. It was already installed, everyone knew how to use it, and nobody needed to submit a procurement request.

That decision made sense at the time. The problem is that it keeps making sense, year after year, even as the organization outgrows what a spreadsheet was designed to do. The org chart that started as a quick tab in a shared workbook becomes the system of record for your entire organizational structure, maintained by one person, out of date within a week of every update, and increasingly unreadable as the company scales.

This article compares managing organizational structure in Excel or Google Sheets with managing it in Peerdom, a purpose-built organizational mapping platform. The goal is not to argue that spreadsheets are bad. They are capable tools. The goal is to show where they fall short when the task is representing, navigating, and evolving a living organization.

Why Organizations Still Use Spreadsheets for Org Charts

Three reasons explain why spreadsheets remain the most common org chart tool, even in organizations with hundreds or thousands of employees.

Familiarity. Everyone knows Excel or Google Sheets. There is no training required, no onboarding friction, and no learning curve. When someone needs to document the org structure, they reach for what they know.

Cost. Spreadsheets are free or already included in existing software licenses. There is no line item in the budget, no approval process, and no vendor evaluation. The total cost appears to be zero.

Inertia. The spreadsheet already exists. Someone created it three years ago. It has been passed around, copied, and patched. Replacing it means admitting that the current approach is not working, migrating data, and convincing leadership to adopt something new. Most people choose to live with the pain instead.

These are legitimate reasons. But they obscure the actual costs, which accumulate quietly and surface only when something goes wrong: a reorganization based on stale data, an audit that reveals undocumented changes, or new hires spending their first month figuring out who does what.

The Hidden Cost of Spreadsheet Org Charts

The direct cost of maintaining an org chart in Excel is someone’s time. Every update requires manually collecting information, editing cells, reformatting the layout, and redistributing the file. In a growing organization, this cycle repeats weekly or monthly.

But the indirect costs are larger and harder to measure.

Version conflicts. When multiple people have copies of the spreadsheet, nobody knows which version is current. The CEO’s copy says one thing. HR’s copy says another. The version on SharePoint has not been updated since last quarter. There is no single source of truth.

No real-time visibility. Spreadsheets are static snapshots. They reflect the organization as it was on the day someone last edited the file. Every day that passes without an update, the gap between the chart and reality widens.

Limited context. A spreadsheet cell can hold a name, a title, and a reporting line. It cannot meaningfully represent what a role does, what its purpose is, what its accountabilities are, or how it connects to other roles across teams. The information that matters most for organizational clarity is the information that does not fit in a cell.

Unscalable visualization. A spreadsheet with 20 rows is readable. A spreadsheet with 200 rows is a wall of text. At 500 or 1,000, the format breaks entirely. There is no way to navigate, zoom, filter, or explore the structure. You scroll.

No audit trail. When someone changes a cell, there is no record of what the previous value was, who changed it, or why. In organizations subject to compliance requirements, this is not an inconvenience. It is a liability.

Labor cost masquerading as free. The spreadsheet itself costs nothing. The hours spent maintaining it, resolving version conflicts, and making decisions on outdated information cost significantly more than a purpose-built tool ever would.

“During the process of mapping out the way our company currently worked with Peerdom, it was like a revelation…we learned things about our 20 year old company that we never saw before and were so much the richer for it.” — Sean Daly, Director, SOLID Structures & Infrastructure

Head-to-Head Comparison

The following table compares managing organizational structure in Excel or Google Sheets versus Peerdom across the dimensions that matter most in practice.

Feature	Excel / Google Sheets	Peerdom
Real-time updates	Manual; someone must edit and redistribute the file	Automatic; changes are live the moment they are saved
Collaboration	File sharing with version conflicts; one editor at a time in Excel	Multi-user live editing; teams own and update their own areas
Visualization	Flat rows and columns; unreadable at scale	Interactive map with circle, tree, and list views
Role detail	Name and title in a cell	Structured roles with purpose, accountabilities, and domains
Search	Ctrl+F across a single sheet	Global search across roles, people, skills, and teams
History / audit trail	Manual versioning (Save As, date in filename)	Automatic journal tracking every change, who made it, and when
Scale	Becomes unreadable past 50 people	Works for organizations from 3 to 30,000
Integrations	Limited to copy-paste and basic CSV export	GraphQL API, SSO (Microsoft Entra, Google, Okta), webhooks, Zapier, Pipedream
Goal tracking	None built in	Goals app with OKR and KPI tracking tied to roles and teams
Sharing	Email attachment or shared drive link	Public link, private link, or embedded on intranet via iframe
Analytics	Manual pivot tables built from scratch	Insights app with role distribution, workload, and vacancy analysis
Cost	Free tool; hidden labor cost in hours of manual maintenance	Free for up to 10 people; Peerdom+ from CHF 5/user/month

The cost row is worth pausing on. A spreadsheet appears free because the tool is already there. But the real expense is in the hours spent rebuilding, the decisions made on stale data, and the onboarding time lost when new hires cannot orient themselves. Peerdom has a visible subscription cost and eliminates invisible costs that most organizations never quantify.

What You Gain by Switching

Moving from a spreadsheet to a purpose-built platform changes how your organization relates to its own structure. The differences are not theoretical. They show up in specific, recurring situations.

Real-time visibility

When someone joins, leaves, or changes roles, the map updates immediately. There is no lag between reality and documentation. Leadership sees the current state of the organization, not last month’s version. For a deeper look at why this distinction matters, see dynamic org charts vs static org charts.

Role clarity

In a spreadsheet, a role is a cell with a title. In Peerdom, a role is a structured object with a purpose statement, accountabilities, defined domains, and connections to goals and projects. When someone reads a role description, they understand not just the title but what the role exists to do and where its boundaries are.

Faster onboarding

New employees exploring a Peerdom map can click into their team, see adjacent teams, understand reporting relationships, and find the right person for any question, all without sending a single email or Slack message. The map becomes the orientation guide.

“New employees say they are immediately oriented, in contrast to what took them years in their previous organisations!” — Christophe Barman, Loyco

Change management

When your organization restructures, the change needs to be visible, understandable, and immediate. Peerdom’s Drafts app lets you design a new structure collaboratively, review it with stakeholders, and publish it to the entire organization in a single action. The complete guide to organizational change management covers the full framework for making structural transitions stick.

Cross-functional transparency

Spreadsheets show vertical reporting lines. They hide the horizontal relationships where most collaboration happens. A purpose-built map shows how teams connect, where people hold roles across multiple circles, and where cross-functional dependencies exist. Silos become visible, and visibility is the first step to breaking them.

Governance and compliance

For organizations pursuing ISO certification or operating under regulatory requirements, an automatic audit trail is not optional. Peerdom’s Journal records every structural change with timestamps, authorship, and context. When auditors ask for documentation, the answer is a link, not a scramble to reconstruct history from email threads and file versions.

When Excel Still Makes Sense

Spreadsheets are not wrong for every use case. There are situations where Excel or Google Sheets remains a perfectly reasonable choice.

Very small teams. If your organization has fewer than five people and no plans to grow significantly, the overhead of a dedicated platform may not be justified. Everyone already knows who does what.

One-time snapshots. If you need a quick org chart for a board presentation, an investor deck, or a legal filing, and you do not need it to stay current, a spreadsheet or a drawing tool is fine. The chart is an artifact, not a system of record.

Data staging. Spreadsheets are excellent for collecting and cleaning data before importing it into a structured system. In fact, this is the most common starting point for organizations moving to Peerdom: export what you have, clean it up in a spreadsheet, then import it.

For everything else, the limitations compound over time. The question is not whether Excel can represent your org chart. It can. The question is whether it can do so in a way that keeps up with reality, scales with growth, and serves as a reliable source of truth.

How to Migrate from Excel to Peerdom

The migration from a spreadsheet to Peerdom is straightforward. No transformation project, consultant, or committee required. Most organizations complete the initial migration in a single session.

Step 1: Export your current data

If your org chart lives in Excel or Google Sheets, export it as a CSV file. Include columns for name, role title, team or department, and reporting relationship. Additional columns such as email, location, or skills can be mapped during import.

Step 2: Import into Peerdom

Peerdom’s CSV import maps your spreadsheet columns to organizational fields. Upload the file, confirm the mapping, and the platform generates your initial map automatically. What took hours to maintain in a spreadsheet now exists as an interactive, searchable, navigable structure.

Step 3: Enrich the structure

Once the basic structure is in place, add the context that spreadsheets could never hold: role purposes, accountabilities, domains, goals, and custom fields. This is where the map transforms from a list of names into a genuine representation of how your organization works.

Step 4: Distribute ownership

Invite team leads to own their areas of the map. When marketing hires someone, the marketing lead updates the map. When engineering restructures, the engineering lead reflects the change. Distributed ownership is the mechanism that keeps the map alive. It is what the spreadsheet never had.

Step 5: Embed and share

Put the map where people already work. Embed it on your intranet, link it from your onboarding documentation, share it via private or public link. The getting started guide walks through setup in detail.

For organizations exploring how Peerdom fits into a broader tool ecosystem alongside project management, HR systems, and governance platforms, the self-management software guide covers the integration landscape.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I keep using Excel alongside Peerdom?

Yes. Many organizations use spreadsheets for data collection, budgeting, and ad hoc analysis while using Peerdom as the system of record for organizational structure. The two are complementary. The key shift is that the spreadsheet is no longer the source of truth for who does what.

How long does it take to migrate from Excel to Peerdom?

The initial import takes minutes. Uploading a CSV and generating the first map is a single-session activity. Enriching the structure with role purposes, accountabilities, and goals is an ongoing process, but the basic migration is fast.

Is Peerdom secure enough for sensitive organizational data?

Peerdom is Swiss-hosted and GDPR compliant. The platform supports SSO through Microsoft Entra, Google, and Okta, along with role-based access controls and configurable visibility settings. You control who sees what.

What if my organization is too small for a dedicated tool?

Peerdom is free for up to 10 people. For very small teams that expect to grow, starting early means the structure is already in place when complexity increases. For teams under five with no growth plans, a spreadsheet may be sufficient.

Can I still export data from Peerdom to Excel if I need to?

Yes. Peerdom supports data export for reporting, compliance documentation, and ad hoc analysis. The platform is designed to be the system of record, not a walled garden.

Does Peerdom replace our HRIS?

No. An HRIS manages employment data: contracts, payroll, benefits, leave. Peerdom manages organizational structure: roles, teams, accountability, governance. They serve different purposes and work best when connected via API integration, so employee data flows from the HRIS while structural data lives in Peerdom.

“Smart, simple, flexible and transparent. A game-changer for truly agile organizations.” — Germain Augsburger, BKW

What views does Peerdom offer that Excel cannot?

Peerdom provides multiple interactive views of the same structure: nested circle maps for holacratic or sociocratic overviews, tree diagrams for hierarchical clarity, and list views for detailed browsing. Each view is navigable, searchable, and filterable. A spreadsheet offers rows and columns. The difference is between reading a phone book and exploring a map.

How does Peerdom handle organizations with matrix structures?

Through multiple role assignments. Whether your organization uses matrix structures, sociocratic circles, or a network organization inspired by Beta Codex, a single person can hold roles in different teams simultaneously, creating visible cross-functional connections. A product manager who also serves as a sustainability lead in a separate circle appears in both contexts. In a spreadsheet, a person can only appear in one row, forcing you to choose which team to list them under and hiding the rest. For more on role-based approaches, see how to implement role-based governance.

See the difference for yourself

If your org chart lives in a spreadsheet, you already have everything you need to try a different approach. Export your CSV, import it into Peerdom, and see your organization as an interactive map instead of a grid of cells.

• Start mapping your organization for free: import your spreadsheet and generate your first map in minutes.
• Want a walkthrough with your own data? Book a demo and we will show you what the switch looks like for an organization like yours.