The spreadsheet that thinks for the farmer

The challenge

The client ran their cattle farm in Excel. Data about the cows came from all over – WhatsApp, photos, notes scribbled on whatever was at hand. Everything had to be entered by hand, and then the same status re-typed in several places, groups kept in order, calving dates tracked. Lots of clicking, easy to slip up – and really only one person had access to the file.

What I did

First, I moved everything from Excel to Google Sheets. It could have been done in Excel too – but at that moment the cloud was simply more practical: everyone has access from their phone, the data lives in one place, and nobody emails around yet another version of the file.

Then came the automation. In theory I could have gone all in – even data from photos can be read automatically. But those notes were written unevenly, and a bot that would read them flawlessly would be fragile and expensive. It was more sensible to let a person enter what matters most – once – and automate all the rest.

I wrote scripts in Google Apps Script that react to changes in the sheet. The farmer changes a cow status to “WYCIELONA” (calved) – and the script assigns her to the right group on its own:

// Fragment kodu odpowiedzialny za automatyczną zmianę danych
if (editedValue == "WYCIELONA") {
  targetCell.setValue("1gr");
} else if (editedValue == "ZASUSZONA") {
  targetCell.setValue("3gr");
}

On top of that, the sheet keeps an eye on deadlines – every week it checks which cows are approaching calving and emails the farmer a list:

if (status === "CIELNA" && plannedCalvingDate >= mondayThisWeek) {
  emailBody += "- PAS: " + data[i][1] + " Nazwa: " + data[i][2] +
  " Nr kolczyka: " + data[i][3] + "
";
}

The result

The data landed in the cloud – available to anyone who needs it. You enter it once, and the sheet handles the rest: cows move into groups on their own, deadlines remind themselves by email. Less re-typing, fewer mistakes, more time for what really matters on a farm. And what I deliberately did not automate stayed simple – because not everything is worth over-engineering.