The Internet has brought a lot of changes - including new ways of using the venerable spreadsheet. Google Sheets is a good example of the "new" brand of spreadsheets. It offers most of the features of Microsoft Excel, but with the convenience of an application hosted in the cloud. Because Google Sheets are online, they provide a simple and easy platform for collaboration and they can be accessed from your computer, tablet, or smart phone. And along with a large library of useful functions they also offer their own built-in programming language. And all of that made Google Sheets a natural for our attempt to transition some of our clients from an old desk-top payroll entry program to a new online version. We wanted something in the cloud, available from any device, easy to use, and something that was already familiar to most people. After researching various online spreadsheets, databases and spreadsheet/database hybrids we settled on Google Sheets as the best fit for what we wanted to do.

The transitioning project is still in progress, but it's far enough along that this book (which covers our adventures in learning about Google Sheets) may be of use to someone else who's interested in using Google Sheets. At least that's our purpose in writing this - plus it's been fun to go back and remember how we got to where we are.