A slight step up from Google Sheets?

August 9, 2017 8:34 PM

What's the next step after using Google Sheets to track artist merchandise contracts at a folk festival? I'm looking for some kind of cloud software that lets me set up various database tables and then lets non-technical users add and update entries through a straightforward interface.

The folk festival in my city has recently started using Google Sheets to track the merchandise that artists bring, with each contract a separate file in Google Drive. This works alright, but one of the most useful things we did this year was pull certain information - checkout time, type of payout - from each contract into a separate spreadsheet.

Google Sheets has limited ability to reference ranges in other sheets, and I can think of ways to build what I want on top of it, but this seems like a job for a proper database. Is there a piece of free online software that would easily let me set up a similar interface to Google Sheets on top of a proper database?

As an example of what I'm after, Microsoft Powerapps does pretty much what I'm looking for, but the end result is pretty locked up inside the Powerapps ecosystem at this point, and it requires an Office 365 subscription.

Thanks in advance, and feel free to ask for any details necessary to help narrow things down.

posted by sagc to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

I think I would use Airtable for this -- it's free (up to a certain # of records in each database, but you're unlimited for the # of databases you make), user-friendly in terms of interface, and pretty customizable and/or powerful for referencing ranges, filtering, rolling up totals, etc. You can also drag-and-drop the contract file (pdf or image attachment) right into the rows that relate to them, so reduced need to externally link to the file itself.
posted by cluebucket at 10:45 PM on August 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Smartsheet isn't free, but is solid for even huge data sets.
posted by scruss at 7:49 AM on August 10, 2017 [1 favorite]

seconding smartsheet
posted by amycup at 8:31 AM on August 10, 2017