Comparisons
CMMS or Excel? When a spreadsheet is enough for your premises' maintenance and when it falls short
Most premises run their maintenance on a spreadsheet, and there is nothing wrong with that: neither the heating and cooling regulation nor the fire protection one asks for software, they ask for inspections to be carried out and for a record to be kept. The useful question is a different one. What that spreadsheet needs so it does not fail, which records have to be kept even if the spreadsheet exists, and at what point premises outgrow it. Here is the answer, without pushing you towards either option.
The short answer
A spreadsheet is enough when there is one site, few pieces of equipment, one person who opens it every month and a maintenance contractor that carries out the inspections and hands over its report. You need a CMMS (GMAO in Spanish) when you have in-house technicians working with work orders, materials and hours to charge to each piece of equipment, or several sites with their own inventory. In between, what usually fails is not the tool but the route by which the fault report arrives.
| What you need | A spreadsheet | A CMMS |
|---|---|---|
| A calendar of dated inspections | Yes, with a next-date column and a formula | Yes, and it generates the work order on the day |
| Finding out when something falls due | Only if someone opens the spreadsheet that month | It warns whoever is set up in it, on its own |
| Capturing a fault a member of staff spots | No: someone copies it from a call or a message | Depends on the product: QR code, portal or app |
| History of each piece of equipment | Possible, by hand and with discipline | Yes, every job stays on the equipment's record |
| Materials, hours and costs per work order | With a lot of work and formulas that break | It is what it is designed for |
| Several sites | One spreadsheet per site, or a huge one | Yes, with each site kept separate |
| The report or certificate for each inspection | It does not replace it: it is kept separately | It can keep a copy; the contractor still signs the report |
When a spreadsheet is enough
A bar with its cold room, its extractor hood, two fire extinguishers and the air conditioning. An office of fifteen people. A ground-floor shop. In premises like these, almost all the dated maintenance is done by an outside company, and what the owner needs is to know what is due, when and who is coming. A spreadsheet is more than enough for that, provided three conditions are met:
- A single spreadsheet, in a shared place. Not the copy on the laptop of whoever made it, nor a "maintenance_final_2.xlsx" going round by email.
- A named person who opens it on the first day of every month and calls whoever is due.
- Next to it, the folder with the reports the maintenance contractor hands over, because the spreadsheet is not the record the regulations ask for.
How to set up a preventive maintenance plan in Excel
One row per inspection, not per piece of equipment. The fire extinguisher in the corridor has a check every three months that you can do yourselves and an annual service by the contractor: that is two rows. These columns are enough:
- Equipment and location: "corridor extinguisher", "meat cold room", "basement boiler".
- What is checked and under which regulation: for example, RIPCI, the Spanish fire protection installations regulation, for the extinguishers; RITE, the Spanish regulation on heating, cooling and hot water installations, for the boiler; or the low-voltage inspection for the switchboard.
- How often, in months.
- Who does it: yourselves, the maintenance contractor or an inspection body, with a phone number.
- Last time and next time. The next date works itself out: with the last date in column F and the months in column E, the formula
=EDATE(F2,E2)(FECHA.MES in Spanish Excel) returns the day it falls due again. - Where the report is: the folder or file in which the paperwork for that inspection is kept.
With conditional formatting that turns red whatever falls due within thirty days, the spreadsheet already shows what is urgent at a glance. What it does not do is call anyone: that still depends on someone opening it. Which inspections apply to you, by type of premises, is under regulations by sector.
Which records the law says must be kept
Neither RITE nor RIPCI requires maintenance to be run on software or on a spreadsheet. What they ask for is a record of what has been done, and for it to be kept. For the two installations almost any premises have, heating and cooling and fire protection, this is how they put it:
It shall be kept for no less than five years, counted from the date on which the corresponding maintenance operation was carried out.
What is kept is the record of maintenance operations for the thermal installation: heating, air conditioning and hot water. The same article says every thermal installation has one, that it forms part of the building logbook (Libro del Edificio), that the maintenance contractor draws it up, and that the owner is responsible for it existing and keeps it available to the authorities.
shall keep documentary evidence of compliance with the preventive maintenance programme for at least five years
It applies both to the maintenance contractor and to the owner, and for fire protection equipment it asks for the operations carried out, the results of the tests and whatever was replaced to be recorded, with the entries kept up to date and available to the regional government's inspectors. The same regulation, in its article 17, requires the contractor to tell the owner the dates on which each operation is due.
Worth knowing
What the regulations do not say. Neither RITE nor RIPCI says in what format the record must be kept. And a date written in a spreadsheet is not that record: the RITE one is drawn up by the contractor, and the RIPCI report is signed by whoever did the maintenance and by the owner's representative.
The contractor having to give notice of the dates does not take the responsibility away from the owner: RITE (article 25) makes the owner responsible for maintenance and for the mandatory inspections. If the call never comes, the inspection is still outstanding.
Where a spreadsheet really fails
It does not fail in the formulas. It fails in three places, and all three are about people:
- How the report comes in. The cook sees the dishwasher dripping at eleven and mentions it to whoever walks past, or posts it in the group chat. It never reaches the spreadsheet, or it arrives days later without the time it was reported, which is exactly what gets argued over with the technician afterwards.
- The month nobody opens it. Holidays, sick leave, a new manager. The red cell is there, but a spreadsheet does not ring: the boiler service slips past and nobody notices until the inspection.
- The version that lives on one person's laptop. That person leaves, the laptop breaks or there are two copies with different dates, and nobody knows which one is right.
If the problem is the second one and you have a lot of equipment, a CMMS solves it, because it generates the work order by itself. If it is the first one, a CMMS only fixes it if the person who spots the fault actually uses it. How reports come in on seven specific products is covered in best CMMS for businesses with premises.
When a CMMS pays off
- You have in-house technicians and want to know what each one is doing, with work orders assigned, carried out and closed.
- You need the history of each piece of equipment to decide whether to repair or replace it, with its materials and its hours.
- There are several sites and you want to compare them, or to measure things such as MTTR, the mean time to repair.
- The preventive plan has dozens of rows and the spreadsheet can no longer be read at a glance.
If none of that applies to you, a CMMS is one more piece of software someone has to keep fed, and a well-kept spreadsheet does the job.
Where Bedel fits
Bedel replaces neither the spreadsheet nor a CMMS: it covers the two gaps they share. The fault comes in through the business's WhatsApp, as text, a photo or a voice note, and the job reaches the phone of whoever fixes it with the time it was reported, the time someone took it and the time it was fixed; if nobody takes it, it goes to the person in charge. Everything ends up in an Excel sheet, so your spreadsheet stays yours.
And the dated inspections in that spreadsheet are loaded into Bedel from it, and every month Bedel reminds whoever handles maintenance about them on WhatsApp, so that in the month nobody opens the spreadsheet none of them slips through.
What it does not do: it is not a CMMS, so it keeps no equipment inventory and no work orders with materials and costs; it does not store the certificate or report for each inspection, which stay in your folder; and it does not replace the maintenance contractor or the inspection body. How it works for each type of premises is on the home page.
Frequently asked questions
Can an Excel spreadsheet serve as a preventive maintenance plan?
Yes, if it has one row per inspection with the equipment, the regulation, how often it is due, who does it, the last date and the next one calculated, and if a named person opens it every month. Neither RITE nor RIPCI requires a particular piece of software. What the spreadsheet does not replace is the record or report the maintenance contractor hands over, which is kept separately.
How long must maintenance records be kept?
At least five years in the two most common cases for premises in Spain. RITE, in its article 27, requires the record of maintenance operations on the thermal installation to be kept for five years from each operation. RIPCI, in section 6 of its annex II, requires both the owner and the maintenance contractor to keep evidence of preventive fire protection maintenance for five years.
What columns does a preventive maintenance template in Excel need?
Equipment and location, what is checked and under which regulation, how often in months, who does it with their phone number, the last date, the next one (with EDATE from the last date and the months) and where the report is kept. One row per inspection, not per piece of equipment, and conditional formatting that marks in red whatever falls due within thirty days.
Is an Excel spreadsheet valid in an inspection?
The spreadsheet shows you know what is due, but what is asked for is evidence of what was done: the RITE maintenance record, drawn up by the contractor, and the RIPCI reports, signed by whoever did the maintenance and by the owner. Neither regulation says in what format they must be kept; they do say the records must be up to date and available to the authorities.
Who has to give notice that an inspection is due?
For fire protection, RIPCI (article 17) requires the maintenance contractor to tell the owner the dates of each operation. But that does not take the responsibility away from the owner: for heating and cooling, RITE (article 25) makes the owner responsible for maintenance and for the mandatory inspections. If nobody calls, the inspection is still outstanding all the same.
When is it worth moving from Excel to a CMMS?
When there are in-house technicians with work to assign and close, when you need materials, hours and costs per piece of equipment, when there are several sites to compare, or when the preventive plan has so many rows it can no longer be read. If the problem is that faults never arrive, changing tool does not fix it: you have to change how the report comes in.
Comparisons
- WhatsApp at work in Spain: group or incident managerWhatsApp groups at work in Spain: what the AEPD has ruled, what the right to disconnect adds and how a group compares with an incident manager for faults on business premises.
- Best CMMS for businesses with premises: criteriaSix criteria built for premises, seven CMMS described with what their websites say, and where Bedel fits, which is not one of them.
Rules by sector
- Restaurants and barsThe obligations of a restaurant or a bar in Spain: what is specific to the kitchen and the checks on the premises, each with the condition that triggers it, how often it applies and its article.
- GymsA gym: no national law; qualifications, insurance and notices under each region's sports professions act, plus low voltage, Legionella, pool, RIPCI and defibrillator as premises.
- HotelsA hotel: guest register and reporting within 24 hours, regional classification, low voltage and lift as a public-assembly venue, RIPCI, Legionella, pool, kitchen and defibrillator.
- Residents' associationsThe obligations of a Spanish residents' association: upkeep, reserve fund, owners' meeting and administrator under the Horizontal Property Act, building logbook, building inspection and the checks on each communal installation.
- Shops and franchisesA shop: responsible declaration up to 750 m², opening hours, prices, franchises with no register since 2018, complaint forms, accessibility adjustments and the inspections of premises open to the public.
- OfficesThe obligations of an office in Spain: temperature and upkeep of the premises, screen work, health and safety, coordination with contractors, internal reporting channel, right to disconnect and building checks.
- SchoolsA school: minimum facilities, protocols against violence and a wellbeing coordinator, canteen and menus from April 2026, self-protection and the building inspections.
- Industrial unitsAn industrial unit: fire inspection every five years under the 2025 regulation, chemical storage (APQ), air receivers, work equipment, low voltage, cooling towers and self-protection.