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HandoutHandout 1: Supply & Shopping List
Handout 1: Supply & Shopping List ## Google Sheets for Small Business Owners
Sooo, good news first: this class is almost free to gear up for. You don't need a fancy laptop or a stack of software. You need a device, an internet connection, and a Google account. That's genuinely most of it.
Here's the full list, broken into what you actually need versus what's nice if you've got a little extra to spend.
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The Must-Haves (Budget Tier)
A Google account (free). If you already use Gmail, you're set. If not, we'll get you signed up the first ten minutes of class. Don't overthink this one.
A device that can run a browser. Laptop is easiest for this class since we're building real sheets, not just looking at them. A tablet can technically work but you'll fight the screen size. If all you've got is a phone, come anyway, we'll figure it out, but a laptop is way better for this specific class.
Internet access. Home wifi is fine. If your internet's spotty, most libraries in the area have solid wifi and a quiet corner, worth knowing.
A notebook and pen. Old school, I know. But you're gonna want to jot down your own business's categories as we go, things like your product list or your expense types, and it's way faster on paper than trying to type it mid-lesson.
Your actual numbers. This is the one people skip and shouldn't. Bring a rough idea of what you sell, what it costs you, and roughly what comes in each month. Doesn't need to be exact. Napkin math is fine, we're building the tool that replaces the napkin.
That's it. That's the whole required list. If you showed up with just those five things you'd be totally fine.
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Nice-to-Haves (If You've Got a Little Room in the Budget)
A second monitor or a bigger screen. Not required, but Sheets gets a lot friendlier when you can see two tabs at once instead of squinting at one. If you've got an old monitor collecting dust in a closet, this is a good excuse to plug it back in.
A external mouse. Trackpads work. A mouse is just faster once you're dragging formulas around and selecting ranges. Ten bucks at pretty much any store out this way, Costco usually has a multipack if you want backups.
A binder or folder for printouts. I'll hand out a worksheet most weeks. Some people like keeping them together instead of loose in a bag. Totally optional, just a "future-you will thank you" kind of thing.
Reading glasses if you need 'em and don't always remember them. Cell text in Sheets is small by default. Not glamorous advice but I mention it every session because someone always squints through week one and mentions it week two.
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A Few Shopping Notes
You don't need to buy Google Sheets, it's free with any Google account, so if anyone tries to sell you a "spreadsheet program" for this class, that's not us and you don't need it.
If you're picking up a mouse or a cheap monitor stand, any general store works. Nothing here requires a specialty tech shop. Save your money for your actual business supplies, that's the whole point of this class.
One more thing: bring your real business info, not a fake practice example. A made-up lemonade stand doesn't teach your brain anything. Your actual numbers, even messy ones, are what make week three click. ❤️
HandoutHandout 2: Google Sheets Cheat Sheet
Handout 2: Google Sheets Cheat Sheet
Sooo this is the one to tape up by your desk, or keep open in another tab while you work. It's every core thing we cover in class, no fluff. If you forget everything else, forget it and come back to this.
The Formulas You Actually Need
You do not need forty functions. You need like five.
- `=SUM(A1:A10)` — adds up a range. This is 80% of running your numbers.
- `=AVERAGE(A1:A10)` — average of a range. Good for "what do I usually sell in a week."
- `=VLOOKUP(A2, Sheet2!A:C, 2, FALSE)` — looks up a value and pulls back matching info. This is the one that scared me most and now I use it weekly. Get the
FALSEright or it'll lie to you. - `=IF(A2>10, "In Stock", "Reorder")` — makes a cell say something based on a condition. Handy for quick status checks without conditional formatting.
- `=COUNTIF(A:A, "Sold")` — counts how many times something shows up. Great for "how many orders did I actually fill this month."
That's the list. Anybody pushes you toward something wild and complicated, you don't need it yet. Maybe ever.
Conditional Formatting (my favorite thing in this whole program)
Format menu > Conditional formatting.
- Pick your range.
- Set the rule ("less than," "greater than," "text contains," whatever fits).
- Pick a color.
I use red for "low stock," yellow for "check this," green for "good." A cell that turns red when you're out of something does more real work than a chart. Charts are pretty. Color that means something actually saves you money.
Quick warning: it's easy to type the rule backwards (ask me how I know, I did this live in front of a whole room once). If everything turns red immediately, you probably have your greater-than and less-than flipped. Not broken, just backwards.
Freezing Rows and Columns
View menu > Freeze. Freeze row 1 so your headers stay put when you scroll. This sounds small. It is not small. It's the difference between reading your sheet and squinting at a wall of numbers wondering which column is which.
Naming Things Clearly
Name your columns and tabs so future-you understands them. Not "Sheet3." Not "Data2." Call it "March Inventory." Your clever shorthand feels obvious today. It will not feel obvious in March. Trust me on this one.
Data Validation (dropdown menus)
Data menu > Data validation. Great for a "Status" column so people pick from "Paid / Unpaid / Refunded" instead of typing whatever they want. Keeps your data clean, which keeps your formulas honest.
Sharing Without Losing Your Mind
Never hand out your master sheet. Make a copy (File > Make a copy) and share that. People will type over your good formulas by accident, every single time, it's not personal, it just happens. Protect your original.
The Rule I Say Most
Build it ugly first. Get the formulas working before you touch a single color or font. I know the pretty version is tempting. Function first, fuss later.
And whatever the spreadsheet tells you, check it against something real. Count the actual boxes. Look at the actual bank balance. Sheets will give you a very confident wrong answer if something's off upstream. Trust it, but verify it too. Learned that one the hard way and it was not a fun afternoon. 🙈
WorksheetHandout 3: Build Your Own Business Tracker (Worksheet)
Handout 3: Build Your Own Business Tracker (Worksheet)
Sooo this is the one where you actually build something. Not a demo, not watching me click around. Yours. Fill this out as we go, and by the end you'll have a real plan for a real sheet, not just notes about one.
Grab a pencil. This gets messy before it gets good, that's normal.
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Step 1: What are you actually tracking?
Before you touch Sheets, answer this on paper. I mean it, don't open the laptop yet.
What's the one thing in your business you're currently guessing at instead of knowing? (inventory, expenses, orders, hours, something else) _________________________
What do you use right now to track it? ☐ Napkin/notebook ☐ My memory ☐ Old spreadsheet that scares me ☐ Nothing, honestly
Who else needs to see this info, if anyone? _________________________________________________
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Step 2: List your columns before you build
This is the step everybody skips and it's the one that saves you the most grief later. Write out every column you actually need. Not every column you think looks impressive.
Column name What goes in it Text, number, or date? A note: name these clearly. "Qty" not "Q." Future-you, three months from now, tired and busy, will thank present-you.
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Step 3: Pick your one formula
Remember, ninety percent of running a small business is SUM, a lookup, and knowing roughly what your total should be. You don't need more than that right now.
Which formula does your sheet actually need? ☐ SUM (totals) ☐ VLOOKUP or similar (pulling info from another list) ☐ A simple IF (flagging something as low, late, overdue) ☐ Not sure yet — that's fine, circle back after class
Write it out in plain English before you write it in Sheets: "I want this cell to ___________________________________"
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Step 4: Where should conditional formatting go?
I'll say it again because I believe it: a cell that turns red when you're low on stock does more work than a chart nobody looks at.
One spot in your sheet where a color change would actually help you: _________________________________________________
Example: inventory count under 5, turn the cell red. Payment overdue by 30 days, turn it yellow. Something you'd actually notice at a glance, not just something that looks nice.
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Step 5: The reality check
A spreadsheet will happily give you a confident wrong answer. It's very good at that. Before you trust a total, check it against something real.
What's your reality check going to be? ☐ Physical count (boxes, inventory, product) ☐ Bank balance ☐ Receipts in a shoebox, counted by hand ☐ Other: _________________________________________________
How often will you check it? ☐ Every time I update the sheet ☐ Weekly ☐ Monthly (be honest with yourself here)
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Step 6: Who gets a copy, not the original
You built it, it's yours. Anyone else who needs to use it gets a copy, never the master. People will overwrite your good formulas by accident. Every time. Not because they're careless, just because it happens.
Who needs a copy of this sheet? _________________________________________________
Where will the master version live so you always know which one's real? _________________________________________________
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One last thing. Build it ugly first. Get the formulas working before you touch a single color or font. The pretty part is dessert, not dinner. You can fuss over it next week once it actually does the job.
Bring this sheet back next class, even in its ugly early form. We'll troubleshoot together. ❤️
HandoutHandout 4: Troubleshooting Guide — When Your Sheet Is Being Weird
Handout 4: Troubleshooting Guide — When Your Sheet Is Being Weird
Sooo. Every single person I've ever taught has hit at least three of these. You are not broken, your sheet is just doing exactly what you told it to do, which is often the problem. Here's the greatest hits.
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1. "My formula shows #REF! or #NAME? or some other angry error"
Usually means you deleted a row or column that a formula was pointing to, or you typo'd a function name. Click the cell, look at the formula bar, read it slow. I mean slow. Nine times out of ten you'll spot it yourself once you actually look instead of panic-staring.
2. "My totals look wrong"
Before you touch a single formula: go count the actual boxes. Look at the actual bank total. A spreadsheet will give you a very confident wrong answer if you let it. I overcounted a whole product line by 300 units once because I trusted the sheet over the shelf. Never again. Check reality first, THEN go hunting in the formula.
3. "My formula worked in one row but not the next"
You probably dragged it down but there's a fixed reference messing things up, or one row just has a different setup than the rest (extra space in a cell, wrong data type, whatever). Compare the working row to the broken row side by side. The difference is usually dumb and small.
4. "Autofill filled in something ridiculous"
Sheets tries to guess what you want when you drag that little fill handle. Sometimes it guesses wrong, especially with dates or numbers. If it looks weird, undo (Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z) and just type the values yourself for a few rows instead of dragging.
5. "I typed a number and it turned into a weird date or got cut off"
Column formatting is fighting you. Right-click the column, format as plain number or text depending what you actually need. This one gets people constantly and it's not you being bad at this, Sheets just makes assumptions.
6. "Someone else opened my sheet and now stuff is missing"
This is why I always say, share a copy, not your master. People edit things by accident all the time, it's not malicious, it just happens. File > Make a copy, hand out the copy. Keep your original somewhere untouched.
7. "My lookup formula (VLOOKUP etc) won't pull the right thing"
Check your column names match EXACTLY, spaces and all. I once spent a full evening reorganizing my spice cabinet because I was convinced my formula logic was wrong, when it was just a typo in a column header. 🙈 Check the boring stuff first.
8. "My conditional formatting turned everything red" (or did nothing at all)
You probably wrote the rule backwards, or pointed it at the wrong range. Happens to me live in class more than I'd like to admit. Delete the rule and rebuild it slow, one step at a time, checking the range first.
9. "I can't find the tab/data I swear I made yesterday"
Check you're not in a different file. Sounds obvious, isn't. Also check for hidden tabs, right-click near the tab names at the bottom.
10. "It's just... slow, or laggy, or freezing up"
Sheets doesn't love giant ranges of formulas doing heavy lifting. Delete unused tabs, don't format entire columns "just in case," and if it's a monster file, consider whether you actually need all that history in one place.
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General rule for all of it: stop, breathe, don't start clicking things randomly. Look at what's actually different between what works and what doesn't. That's where the answer's hiding, almost every time. ❤️
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 1
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —okay wait, say that again, because I don't think I've ever heard anyone describe a spreadsheet as "emotional."
SARA: It's emotional! I stand by it. People walk in white-knuckling a printout from their bank app and they leave able to actually see their money. That's emotional.
JESS: Okay. Fair. For anyone just tuning in, this is the podcast that goes with the Utah Community Learning classes, and today's the one that goes with "Google Sheets for Small Business Owners," which starts up this week at the rec center.
SARA: Right, six Tuesdays, 6:30, bring a laptop if you've got one, we've got a few extras if you don't.
JESS: And Sara, you're not, like, a professional spreadsheet person. Tell people what you actually do.
SARA: So I'm warehouse lead over at Ridgemont Partners in Lehi. And I did not go looking for this. Somebody quit about three years ago, the guy who ran our inventory tracking, and he left behind this spreadsheet that was just... a crime scene. Tabs nobody understood. Formulas that broke if you sneezed on them.
JESS: A crime scene.
SARA: A crime scene. So I sat down after my shifts for like two weeks straight and just rebuilt the whole thing. Watched a ton of YouTube. Broke it, fixed it, broke it again about nine times.
JESS: And somewhere in there you got into it.
SARA: Somewhere in there I got weirdly into it, yeah. And it wasn't even the tech part. It was watching people's shoulders drop when they could finally see their numbers instead of guessing.
JESS: Okay so give us something real. What's a mistake you made in there that people would relate to.
SARA: Oh, I've got one that still makes my stomach hurt a little. So this was way before I was teaching anything, this was Primary, my Sunday calling.
JESS: Wait, church Primary, with the kids?
SARA: Church Primary with the kids. I had this lesson and I basically just... winged it. Didn't outline it, figured I'd feel my way through like I usually do. And it just died. Total silence. Eight-year-olds staring at me like I'd stopped mid-sentence, which, I had.
JESS: Oof.
SARA: Yeah, I felt it in my stomach, like actually felt it. And that was the moment I realized, oh, I'm a person who needs a plan. I can't just trust the room to carry me. So now I outline everything. Real outlines, before I build anything, before I teach anything.
JESS: That's basically the whole first lesson of the class, right, plan before you build?
SARA: Literally the first thing I say. People want to jump in and start typing formulas and picking colors for their cells before they even know what they're tracking. I get it, it's fun. But build it ugly first. Get it working. Make it pretty last, if you even bother.
JESS: Okay give us one thing right now. Something a listener could use tonight without ever taking the class.
SARA: Ooh, okay. Conditional formatting. Everybody wants a fancy chart, a pie graph, whatever. But set up one rule where a cell turns red when your inventory number drops below, say, five. Or your checking account subtotal turns red under some number that scares you.
JESS: That's it?
SARA: That's it. It's like ten seconds to set up and it'll do more actual work for your business than any chart ever will. A chart is pretty. A red cell tells you to go do something.
JESS: I like that it's just useful, no learning curve.
SARA: That's the whole point of the class honestly. You don't need ninety percent of what Google Sheets can do. You need SUM, one lookup formula, and a gut check against reality. Count the actual boxes. Look at the actual bank balance. The spreadsheet will tell you a real confident wrong answer if you let it.
JESS: Says the woman who once overcounted inventory by 300 units.
SARA: Do not bring that up. That was one bad formula and one very stressful Tuesday, and yes, I check every total against a physical count now, forever, because of that afternoon.
JESS: We're bringing it up because it's relatable. Nobody wants the person who's never messed up teaching them.
SARA: Fair, fair.
JESS: Okay, so next week, session two, what are we building toward?
SARA: Next week we're setting up an actual invoice sheet, start to finish, one page, nothing fancy. I built one like that for my husband Daniel a while back for his little bike-fixing side thing, and he fought me on it for a year and now he won't admit I was right, but he uses it every single week.
JESS: There it is.
SARA: There it is. So bring whatever you're currently tracking on, a napkin, a notes app, whatever chaos system you've got going, and we'll turn it into something real.
JESS: And there's banana bread.
SARA: There's always banana bread. See you Tuesday.
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 2
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —okay wait, say that again, because I don't think people caught it the first time.
SARA: Which part, the invoice thing?
JESS: The invoice thing.
SARA: Sooo. One page. That's it. That's the whole tip.
JESS: For people just listening at home and not in the class.
SARA: Yes! Okay. If you're a small business owner and you're tracking what people owe you on, like, a sticky note or a text thread with yourself, stop. Open Google Sheets. Make one page. Columns for date, who, what for, amount, paid or not paid. That's it. You don't need five tabs. You don't need color coding yet. Just get the information in one place you can actually look at.
JESS: I feel like people are gonna resist the "that's it" part. They're gonna think there's a catch.
SARA: There's no catch. This is literally the thing I had to convince Daniel of for like a year.
JESS: Your husband.
SARA: My husband. He fixes up bikes on the side, it's a whole thing, he's actually really good at it, and for a solid year he tracked zero dollars of it anywhere. Just vibes. He'd remember, or he wouldn't, and money would just kind of exist or not exist.
JESS: Sounds stressful.
SARA: It was stressful for ME. He was fine. He's very chill about money in a way that low-key drives me crazy. So finally I just built him the simplest possible sheet. One page. No fancy stuff, no formulas he'd have to think about. I basically said, here, you don't even have to learn anything, just type in the numbers.
JESS: Did he use it?
SARA: He uses it now. Won't admit I was right, but he uses it. Every time somebody pays him he opens it up and types it in, and last month he actually knew, off the top of his head, how much he'd made. Which had literally never happened before.
JESS: That's the whole class right there. That's the poster.
SARA: (laughs) That's the poster. "You Don't Have to Be Fancy, You Just Have to Write It Down."
JESS: Okay so for the tip people can use tonight, no class required — one page, five columns, that's it?
SARA: That's it. Date, who, what for, amount, paid or not. If you want a sixth column, make it notes, for stuff like "owes me for the tune-up, will pay Friday." That's all the structure you need to start.
JESS: And don't make it pretty yet.
SARA: Do NOT make it pretty yet. I will fight people on this. I've watched people spend forty minutes on a color scheme before they've typed a single real number in. Get it working first. Ugly and working beats pretty and empty every single time.
JESS: Okay, last thing before we let people go. Next session.
SARA: Next session we're doing conditional formatting, which, I will just say now, is my favorite thing in the whole class. More than charts. I know charts look impressive, everybody wants the pie chart, but a cell that turns red on its own when you're low on stock or somebody's payment is late? That's doing actual work for you. That's the good stuff.
JESS: You told me last week you once made an entire spreadsheet turn red in front of a room.
SARA: Oh, that's happening again, don't worry, I'll probably do it live. I typed a rule backwards once and the whole sheet just went full red alert, and I just stood there and went, "sooo, that's what NOT to do." Biggest laugh I got all class.
JESS: See you all Thursday, then. Bring a laptop, maybe don't bring red text if you're superstitious.
SARA: And I'll bring the banana bread. Some things don't change.
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 3
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —okay wait, say that part again, because I don't think I've ever heard someone describe conditional formatting as "emotional."
SARA: It IS emotional! A cell turns red because you're almost out of stock, that's your spreadsheet yelling at you before it's a real problem. That's not nothing. That's like, a whole feeling.
JESS: Sara Love, folks. Warehouse lead by day, spreadsheet whisperer by night, apparently now spreadsheet therapist too.
SARA: Sooo I stand by it though. Everybody wants the pretty chart. The pie chart. I get it, it's satisfying. But I'll take a cell that turns red over a pie chart every single time. The pie chart just sits there looking nice. The red cell tells you to do something.
JESS: This is episode three, by the way, if you're just tuning in. We're deep in Google Sheets for Small Business Owners, week three of six. Sara, what'd we cover in class this week?
SARA: Conditional formatting and lookups. Which sounds boring written down, I know. But it's genuinely the stuff that makes people go "oh."
JESS: The shoulder drop.
SARA: The shoulder drop! Yes. That's my whole thing, I keep saying it, but it's true. Somebody sees their low-stock items turn red automatically and they just relax a little. Like the sheet's doing the worrying for them now.
JESS: Okay tell the story. You have to tell the spice cabinet story, I've heard about this secondhand from like three people already.
SARA: Oh no. Okay. So this was a while back, I was building a lookup formula for a client's pricing sheet, and it would not pull the right price. Kept giving me the wrong number, or nothing, or an error. And it was late, like eleven at night, and for some reason my brain decided the problem must be organizational. Like if I just understood my OWN systems better I'd understand the formula.
JESS: That escalated fast.
SARA: It escalated to me reorganizing my entire spice cabinet. Alphabetical first. Then I redid it by how often I actually use things. Cumin everywhere. My husband Daniel comes downstairs, finds me surrounded by spice jars at eleven at night, and just... goes back to bed. Doesn't even ask.
JESS: Smart man.
SARA: And the whole time, the actual problem was a typo in a column name. One letter off. That's it. That's the whole crisis.
JESS: So the lesson is—
SARA: The lesson is check your spelling before you reorganize your kitchen. But also, genuinely, that's such a common thing. People think there's some deep formula mystery and ninety percent of the time it's a typo or a mismatched column name. It's not you being dumb, it's autocorrect being autocorrect.
JESS: Okay give the people something they can use today. Something they don't have to wait for class for.
SARA: Yes okay, here's a real one. If you only do one thing after listening to this, set up ONE conditional formatting rule on whatever sheet you're already using. Doesn't have to be fancy. Highlight a column, format, conditional formatting, tell it "if this number is less than whatever, turn red." That's it.
JESS: That simple.
SARA: That simple. If you track inventory, do it on your stock count. If you track bills, do it on due dates. You will look at that sheet differently the next day. I promise. It's the cheapest, easiest win in the whole class and people skip it because they want to learn the fancy stuff first.
JESS: Which you have opinions about.
SARA: I have opinions about everything, Jess, you know this.
JESS: Fair. Okay, quick one before we wrap. Anybody's screen doing something weird this week? I know you always ask that in class.
SARA: I do always ask that. Nobody emailed me anything broken so I'm gonna assume we're good. But if your lookup's acting up, ninety percent chance it's a typo. Check that before you reorganize anything in your house.
JESS: Noted, personally. So what's coming next week?
SARA: Next session we're doing simple invoices. One page, nothing fancy, the kind of thing you can actually hand a customer or email as a PDF. I built one for Daniel for his bike stuff years ago and he still uses it, so it's road tested.
JESS: Does he know you talk about him on the podcast.
SARA: He knows. He's fine with it. He should just admit I was right about the invoice sheet, honestly, that's the real issue.
JESS: We'll leave that thread for episode four. Sara, thank you.
SARA: Thanks Jess. Bring snacks next time, I mean it.
Videos worth your time
Hand-picked by your instructor, with notes on what to watch for.
- Google Sheets Beginner TutorialLearn Skills Daily
Watch how the instructor walks through the Sheets interface and basic formulas so you can follow along on your own spreadsheet.
- Bookkeeping for Small Business owners using Google Sheets! *Template* | track income, expensesoso.shannon
Pay attention to how the free template tracks income and expenses since this is built specifically for small business owners.
- Google Sheets Tutorial for Beginners – Step-by-StepLoves Data
Notice the step by step pacing from creating your first spreadsheet to basic formatting, good for total beginners.
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