Version Control Chaos: When FINAL_v3 Isn’t Final | The Spreadsheet Series

Spreadsheets don’t collaborate—they just copy.

It starts innocently enough.
You’re working on the show schedule. You make some updates, save it as “RunOfShow_Updated.xlsx.”
Then the hotel sends you their edits, saved as “RunOfShow_UpdatedFromHotel.xlsx.”
Your colleague makes her changes and saves “RunOfShow_FINAL_v2_USETHIS.xlsx.”

And just like that, the one source of truth becomes seven versions of the truth—and no one knows which one is real.

When Every Version Is “Final,” None of Them Are

The problem isn’t just naming conventions—it’s that spreadsheets weren’t built for collaborative workflows.

• You can’t see who made what change (unless you’re in Google Sheets with tracked changes turned on)

• You can’t trust that the version you have is the most recent—unless you ask someone

• You can’t merge updates from different versions without opening them side-by-side and reconciling line by line

That’s not collaboration. That’s project archaeology.

“I once spent 90 minutes before a client call trying to figure out which version had the final speaker list. Each one had small changes—an asterisk here, a room name updated there—but none of them matched.”
— Agency producer managing a 4-day summit

The Copy-Paste Spiral: A Real-Life Time Suck

Let’s say AV has their own version of the room setup grid.
Catering’s working off an exported PDF from last week.
And your showcaller asked for a “clean” copy of the schedule that you promised to send by EOD.

So what do you do? You spend an hour copying and pasting your own information from one file to another—just to get everyone back on the same page.

Spreadsheets aren’t just slow, they’re duplicative.
And duplicative work is the fastest way to burn out your team.

“Shared” Doesn’t Mean “Synchronized”

Even cloud-based spreadsheets like Google Sheets or Excel 365 don’t solve the whole problem.

• You still need to control who sees what

• You still need to explain your formatting logic

• You still risk someone overwriting something important without realizing it

• You still need to backtrack when someone “accidentally deleted a row” (yes, it happens)

You can build protections into your sheets—but doing so often adds more work than it saves.

Real Consequences from Real Chaos

Let’s be clear: version control is not a theoretical problem. It leads to real issues like:

• A VIP speaker showing up at the wrong time

• F&B being under-ordered because an update didn’t make it to the right file

• A sponsor being left off signage because their info was saved in a different version

• A planner printing the “wrong” run of show—right before doors open

The worst part? These issues often get blamed on the planner—not the process.

Spreadsheets Don’t Scale With Your Team

A spreadsheet works when it’s just you. But once you bring in your client, your venue, your suppliers, and your production team—it falls apart.

Planning multi-day events isn’t a solo mission. So why are we still using solo tools?

If your vendors won’t use it, it’s not working.

Vendors shouldn’t need a decoder ring to understand your event plan. If they’re skipping over spreadsheets or asking for recaps in email, your process is slowing everyone down. Collaboration should be seamless, not another to-do.

Pholeo makes it easy to share just the information each stakeholder needs—clearly, cleanly, and on time. Request a demo to see how it works.