The spreadsheet for tracking expiry dates — and where it stops working

The columns that matter

Name, category, expiry date, renewal cycle, owner, status. Anything beyond these tends to be filled in for a fortnight and then abandoned, which is worse than not having the column — a half-populated field is one nobody trusts.

Renewal cycle is the one people leave out and later regret. Without it you cannot compute next year's date automatically, so every renewal becomes a manual edit and eventually a forgotten one.

The formula

In a status column, something like =IF(C2<TODAY(),"EXPIRED",IF(C2-TODAY()<=30,"DUE SOON","OK")) covers the three states that matter. Apply conditional formatting to the same column so the sheet is readable at a glance.

Use a real date type, not text. Dates typed as text sort alphabetically, which puts 1 March before 1 February and hides exactly the row you needed to see.

The three ways it fails

It cannot tell you anything. The file has no way to reach you; it waits to be opened. Every lapse in a spreadsheet-run system happens on a day nobody opened the file.

Renewals destroy history. When you overwrite last year's date with this year's, you lose the record that the item was ever current in the prior period — which is precisely what an auditor asks to see.

It has one owner in practice. Whoever built it maintains it, and when they are on leave or move on, the sheet goes stale quietly rather than visibly.

When to stop using one

Not at a row count. The honest trigger is the first time something lapses that the sheet knew about, or the first time somebody outside your team asks you to prove a date and you send a screenshot.

If you are below about twenty-five items and one person owns all of them, a spreadsheet plus a calendar reminder is genuinely fine. Anything that adds cost below that threshold is not worth it.