Fit gap sheet: scoring a ready product against your own records

Start from what exists. Do not copy the vendor’s feature list. Walk through one full week of work with a pen, and turn every form, register, message template and weekly report you touch into a row on the sheet.

Use four row types. A document is a form or quotation. A status is a stage it passes through. A report is a number someone checks. A rule is a condition, for example a discount that needs a manager’s approval above a set limit, or a reminder sent a week before renewal.

Covered means the product does the task today, out of the box, in the way your staff already work, with no setting changed and no workaround taught. Configured means no code, only a setting. Custom means a developer builds it. Not needed means you stop doing it.

Be strict with the last score. Dropping a task is a real decision, and someone senior should own it, because a task dropped quietly returns later as a spreadsheet on somebody’s desk.

An interior design firm tracks a project through a room-wise estimate, a bill of quantities, vendor purchase orders, client design approvals and stage-wise billing. Each one becomes a row.

Sample rows read like this. The room-wise estimate, with carpentry, false ceiling and electrical lines, is covered, and so is the fortnightly report of vendor dues by site. Site-linked purchase orders need configuration. Client sign-off on a 3D render is custom.

A pattern appears. If the custom rows cluster around client approvals, you know where to press the vendor, and where to ask for a fixed price in writing before you sign.

A coworking space runs on hot desks, dedicated desks, cabins, meeting-room hours, day passes and recurring plans, so its rows lean on time and credits more than on stock. Typical rows are a monthly seat plan, a meeting-room credit that resets each month and a deposit refunded when the member leaves.

Add the odd ones. A member moves from a hot desk to a cabin on the eleventh, and the product must split the month between two plans without a manual credit note. A company account holds five members but gets one invoice. Score each one like the rest.

Rules matter too. A booking cannot overlap another, and unused credits do not roll over to the next month, so a product that misses either rule will let a wrong booking through.

Count the rows in each score. A high covered count with few custom rows means a ready product suits you. A long custom column means you are buying half a product and paying to finish it.

Then weigh the rows. One custom row for monthly billing matters more than five custom rows for rarely used reports, because billing runs on every customer, every month, without exception. Mark each row daily, weekly or rare. Then put the finished sheet in front of every vendor on your shortlist.