What are the advantages of a database versus my paper system or an Excel spreadsheet?
For medium and large operations, it’s difficult to manage everything in Excel because you’re usually juggling several spreadsheets. With Lodgepole: 1) You are organized: you have one place to enter data. 2) You can easily do queries. At the click of a button, pull out a list of all the work that needs to be done on several buildings for the year 2012. 3) You can save time: you only need to change the name of a building in one place versus all spreadsheets. 4) Your data is connected together: a photo can be shown with the information about a waterline. By leveraging the capabilities of a relational database, Lodgepole is much more powerful than Excel. However, if you have a small operation, juggling a handful of spreadsheets becomes more manageable, and we often recommend that you use a spreadsheet system, rather than Lodgepole.
