Google Workspace automation without taking spreadsheets away from your team
Sheets, Drive, Gmail and Calendar are not a set of apps in your company, they are its operating system. We lift the processes out of them so the team keeps working in the spreadsheet while the data gets one real source. Apps Script where it is enough, permissions and shared drives laid out again from scratch, a warehouse only once the spreadsheet stops coping.
- 6 minutesthe longest a single Apps Script execution can run on a free account, 30 minutes on a Google Workspace account. A limit from Google's own documentation, not something code gets around
- 14 daysfrom the workshop to the first automation running on your spreadsheets and your Drive
- 2 to 4 weekshow long a full rollout usually takes: the entry point, permissions, a change log and the report
- 0 new toolsthe team stays in Sheets, on Drive and in Gmail. What changes is what sits underneath
The problem
Why does a company running on Google Workspace drown in its own spreadsheets?
It started with one spreadsheet. Then somebody added a tab for orders, somebody else a column for status, and the bookkeeper asked for a separate file for invoices. Today you have a spreadsheet that is a database, a Drive that is an archive, a Gmail that is a task queue and a Calendar that is the work plan. Nobody designed it that way. It simply grew.
The problem is not that Google Workspace is too weak. The problem is that a spreadsheet has no idea who overwrote row 412, or when. It does not check that a VAT number has the right number of digits. It will not refuse when two people enter the same order twice. Your salesperson knows that file by heart and will keep working in it, so taking the spreadsheet away is not a repair plan, it is the day those numbers start moving around by email instead.
The worst cases do not look dangerous. A price list spreadsheet has a single link into the orders spreadsheet, somebody deletes a column in it, and for three weeks proposals go out at last year's price. Nobody is at fault, because nobody knew that file was somebody else's foundation. That is what a process without one source of data looks like.
The cost does not show up on an invoice, because you already pay for the licences. It shows up in limits. The Apps Script documentation gives 6 minutes for a single script execution and 30 minutes on a Google Workspace account, with total trigger runtime of 90 minutes a day and 6 hours on a business account. A script that computed a report in a minute back in January cuts out halfway through in November. Nobody gets an email and nobody knows the report is incomplete.
- Nobody knows which version of the spreadsheet is the real one
- A script dies quietly and the error surfaces a week later in a report
- The person who wrote those formulas has left and there is nothing written down
- A client gets access to a folder that also holds another client's price list
- The board report gets assembled by hand on Friday evening, again
Why now
What changed, so that a process can be lifted out of a spreadsheet in weeks?
Every Google Workspace service now has its own API and webhooks, and Apps Script runs code with no server, in the same cloud the files already sit in. There is nothing to set up, buy or migrate. Automation starts on the account you already pay for, on the files your team already works in.
The second change is shared drives. A file on one belongs to the company rather than to a person, so somebody leaving stops taking the contracts folder with them. Permissions get granted at the drive level instead of file by file, and that is the difference between order that holds and order that lasts a quarter.
The third is an escape route that did not exist before. When a spreadsheet stops coping, the history goes to BigQuery and the spreadsheet becomes a view onto that data. The team opens the same file as before, the numbers just arrive from the warehouse. You no longer have to choose between clean data and a tool people already know.
Then there is the AI agent. A script will compute a report, but it will not answer the question how many September orders still have no invoice. BOND, our company AI agent, answers that in a plain sentence in 5 to 10 seconds, reading the same spreadsheets and the same warehouse.
What changes
What does a team that stays in Google Workspace actually get?
The spreadsheet stays, it just stops being a database
The team opens the same file and the same tabs. Underneath, the spreadsheet reads from one source and writes through a form or a script, so a hand typed cell stops wiping out somebody else's work.
The same view for the team, one write path instead of ten people typing straight into cells
An entry point instead of typing it in
New data comes in through a Google Form with validation: a VAT number in the right format, a date that is not in the future, an amount that is a number. The response lands in the spreadsheet and starts the rest of the process straight away.
Validation at the door, not during the monthly spreadsheet clean up
Documents built from a template
A contract, a proposal and a handover record get built in Google Docs from a template fed by the spreadsheet or the CRM. The file goes into the client folder with the right name and the right access.
File name, folder and permissions set by a rule, not by the memory of whoever is generating the document
A Drive laid out once and staying that way
A new client in the CRM creates the folder structure on a shared drive. A closed case moves to the archive, and access for people outside the company expires on a date rather than at some point.
Files belong to the company, not to an employee account, so leaving the job does not take the contracts folder along
Gmail stops being the task list
Enquiries from a shared mailbox go to the CRM or the ticket system with a label and an owner. The Calendar gets its dates from the process instead of from a chat thread.
A request has an owner and a deadline in a system, not in somebody's inbox after hours
A report that computes itself and complains for itself
The report refreshes at an agreed hour and writes an execution log. When a source stops responding or a script cuts out, you get a message the same day.
Script error monitoring instead of the silence you only notice in an incomplete report
And in your company
What if our spreadsheets are a complete mess?
Four sentences we hear on almost every first conversation about Google Workspace.
None of them is a reason to put the subject off. The first three get settled in the workshop, the fourth in the data access arrangements, before we touch a single file.
Our spreadsheets are chaos, we would be embarrassed to show them to anyone.
They all are, because they grew with the company over years and nobody designed them. In the workshop we are not judging the spreadsheet, we are looking for the process inside it: where the data comes in, who changes it, what happens to it at the end. A messy file tells us something about the process, it does not stand in the way of the conversation.
We do not want to take spreadsheets away from people, they have worked in them for years.
And we do not. The spreadsheet stays as the interface, because the team knows it and nobody has to be talked into a new tool. What changes is underneath it: one write path, validation at the door, a change history. The view stays the same.
Our own IT person already writes Apps Script for us, why bring in outsiders?
If the scripts work, they are documented and somebody maintains them, we will say it plainly: you do not need us for this. The conversation comes back when a script runs past Google's limits, when the author leaves, or when Workspace starts talking to the CRM and accounting, because that is where one file ends and a process across three systems begins.
We are worried about outsiders seeing our data.
The scope of access gets agreed in the workshop and we usually work on a copy with the data masked. The scripts sit on your Google Workspace account and after the rollout they belong to you, source code included. Permissions get tidied on shared drives, so access is granted to a drive rather than to a person's account.
- Google Workspace
- Sheets, Docs, Drive, Gmail, Calendar, Forms, shared drives
- Script layer
- Apps Script, time triggers, webhooks, the APIs of the individual Google services
- CRM
- HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Zoho
- Finance and commerce
- Xero, sevDesk, Fakturownia, Comarch Optima, BaseLinker, Shopify, WooCommerce
- Data and reporting
- BigQuery, GA4, Google Ads, SQL databases
- Team work
- Slack, Microsoft 365, Notion, ClickUp, Jira, Asana
Google limits that spreadsheet processes run into
The places where automation inside Google Workspace most often stops working, and what we do about each of them. Worth knowing before a project, because some of these decide whether the process stays in Apps Script or moves outside it.
| Task in Workspace | The limit it runs into | What we do about it |
|---|---|---|
| A script computes a report in a spreadsheet | 6 minutes per execution, 30 minutes on a Workspace account | we split the work into batches and a queue instead of computing everything at once |
| A time trigger fires every hour | 90 minutes of total trigger runtime a day, 6 hours on a business account | a less frequent trigger, or the computing moves out of Apps Script |
| A script pulls data from a CRM API | 20,000 UrlFetch calls a day | incremental fetching instead of a full one, with a cache in a helper sheet |
| A spreadsheet sends email notifications | 1,500 recipients a day from a Workspace account | one digest message a day, or a Slack channel |
| The spreadsheet grows every month | 10 million cells in a single file | the history goes to BigQuery and the spreadsheet becomes a view onto that data |
| A shared drive collects client files | 500,000 items on a single shared drive | a yearly archive on a separate drive, a shortcut in the current one |
| A form is the entry point to the process | one submitted response is one row, with no edit after the fact | a separate correction form and a log of both versions in the sheet |
These thresholds come from the Apps Script, Sheets and Google Drive documentation, and Google changes them without notice. We check them in the workshop against your own Workspace plan, because some limits differ between a free account and a business one.
How we work
Five steps from a spreadsheet that outgrew itself to a process that works
Process first, tools second. Every step ends with something you can judge before you decide on the next one.
Workshop
We open your spreadsheets together with you and look for the process inside: who enters the data, who corrects it, what comes out at the end and how long it takes. We also write down what lives in the mailboxes and the Calendar, because that is usually where the rest of the process sits, the part no file records.
Design: what stays, what changes
We settle on one source of data, the entry point and what stays as the view for the team. We pick the execution layer: Apps Script when the process sits inside Google, an orchestrator when the CRM or accounting comes into it. Shared drives and permissions get laid out at the same time.
Pilot on a copy of your data
The first automation runs on a copy, alongside the process that keeps going the old way. We test it on the last few weeks of data, including the rows with errors and the busiest month of the year. That is usually 14 days after the workshop.
Production and handover
We switch the process to production with an execution log and error alerts. The code sits on your Google Workspace account and after the rollout it belongs to you. The person who owns the spreadsheet learns to change what changes most often: thresholds, recipients, deadlines.
Measurement at 30 and 90 days
We look at what is actually happening: how many times the script cut out, how many rows came in with errors, how long the work now takes that a person used to do. If the spreadsheet is starting to hit its limits, that is the moment to move to a warehouse.
Before and after
How the week changes for the person who owns the spreadsheets
Before
- Monday morning goes on stitching a report together out of four files
- She digs through version history to find who overwrote the status column
- She creates folders and grants access to a new client by hand
- She hears about an incomplete report from the CEO, a week after the fact
After
- The report is ready before her first coffee, with an execution log
- Data comes in through a form, so there is nothing left to overwrite
- Folder structure and permissions appear on their own from a new CRM record
- She knows about a script that cut out the same day, from an alert
The first automation is visible 14 days after the workshop. The effect on the whole process gets judged at 30 days, and at 90 days we check whether the spreadsheet is still enough.
For the person signing this off
What an operations director gets out of it
You stop depending on the one person who understands those formulas. The process is written down, the code sits on your account and permissions live on shared drives, so a holiday or a resignation does not take the contracts folder along. That is a risk which is hard to put on a slide, and very easy to feel in a week when somebody is off sick.
The second thing is for the conversation with the board. You know how many times a month the process cut out, how many rows came in with errors and how much team time goes into it. Today you do not know that, because a spreadsheet keeps no statistics. After the rollout those are numbers you can base a decision on, whether that decision is the next stage or dropping it.
- The code on your Google Workspace account, with no dependency on us
- A pilot alongside the old process, so nothing stops while testing runs
- Permissions on shared drives, files owned by the company
- An execution log and error alerts from the first day of production
- A workshop at EUR 3,500 net per week, so the first step fits a budget without a board resolution
What it costs
The workshop has a published price, the rollout is quoted after it
The process workshop costs EUR 3,500 net per week and runs from one to seven weeks. For a single process in Google Workspace one week is usually enough, because the files and the mailboxes are right there from the start. We quote the rollout after the workshop, once it is clear how many files are involved, how many systems have to be wired in and what state the permissions are in.
You already pay for Google Workspace, so automation in Apps Script adds no tool cost. When the process reaches outside Google and needs an orchestrator or a warehouse, you pay that bill directly to the provider, with no margin from us. A single AI agent query costs the provider roughly EUR 0.005 to 0.07, which is the order of magnitude we give you in the workshop rather than on the first invoice.
You can buy the workshop and stop there. A few companies did exactly that: they took the process map and the permissions plan, and their own IT person built the rest. The document is written so that this is possible.
Process workshop
EUR 3,500 net
per week, and for a single process in Workspace that is usually one week
A self-contained piece of work. It ends with a map of the process and a plan you could carry out with your own hands, including without us.
- A review of the spreadsheets, Drive, mailboxes and Calendar, read as a process
- A map: where the data comes in, who changes it, what comes out at the end
- A recommended execution layer: Apps Script or an orchestrator
- A permissions and shared drive plan
- The measures to check at 30 and 90 days
- The list of Google limits that apply to your Workspace plan
- Most popular
Workshop and a Workspace rollout
Quoted after the workshop
scope follows from the number of files, systems and people in the process
The option most companies choose. The first automation 14 days after the workshop, the full rollout in 2 to 4 weeks.
- Everything in the workshop
- An entry point through a form with validation, plus a change log
- Document generation from templates and order on Drive
- A report refreshed at an agreed hour, with error monitoring
- Code on your account, training for the person who owns the spreadsheet
- Shared drives tidied up and outside access with an expiry date
Workspace and an AI agent
Quoted after the workshop
for companies that ask about this data a dozen times a day
Everything in the rollout plus BOND, which answers questions about spreadsheet and warehouse data in a plain sentence.
- Everything in the Workspace rollout
- An AI agent reading your spreadsheets, your Drive and your warehouse
- An answer in 5 to 10 seconds, with no report to build first
- Access for the team on the Google Workspace accounts you already have
- Agent rollout takes around 2 months, counted from the point the data is ready
The workshop ends with a document that stands up without us: a map of the process, a permissions plan and a recommended tool. If it turns out that tidying one spreadsheet and adding twenty lines of Apps Script is enough, we say so and show you how, instead of selling you a rollout you do not need.
Frequently asked questions
What is Google Workspace automation?
It is lifting a process out of Sheets, Drive, Gmail and Calendar into a shape that polices itself: one entry point with validation, one source of data, documents built from a template and a report that refreshes at an agreed hour. The team keeps working in the tools it knows. What changes is what sits underneath.
Do we have to change tools or migrate anything?
No. We work on the Google Workspace account you already have and on the files your team already works in. The spreadsheet stays as the interface, because talking people into a new tool costs more than the rollout itself. A migration only comes into play when a file is hitting Google's limits.
When is Apps Script enough and when do you need an orchestrator?
Apps Script is enough when the process sits inside Google: a spreadsheet sends an email, a form writes a row, a script builds a document from a template. An orchestrator comes in when the CRM, accounting or a shop is involved, when you need retries after an error, or when the script starts running past the execution time limits. We decide that in the workshop, not up front.
Which Apps Script limits hurt most in practice?
Usually three: 6 minutes for a single script execution and 30 minutes on a Google Workspace account, the total trigger runtime across a day, and the number of calls to outside APIs. The fix is rarely a rewrite of the code, it is splitting the work into batches and fetching only what has changed. We check the limits against your own plan, because a free account has different ones.
What about permissions and personal data in spreadsheets?
We move the files onto shared drives so they belong to the company rather than to an employee account, and we grant access at drive level instead of file by file. Access for people outside the company gets an expiry date. In the workshop we also settle which data has to be in the spreadsheet at all, because the simplest way to protect personal data is not to keep it there.
When does a spreadsheet stop being enough and you have to move to a warehouse?
There are three signals: the file is approaching 10 million cells, it takes tens of seconds to open, or the report no longer computes within the script time limit. At that point the history goes to BigQuery and the spreadsheet becomes a view onto that data. The team opens the same file, the numbers just arrive from the warehouse.
How long does a Google Workspace automation rollout take?
A week of workshop, then 14 days to the first working automation and usually 2 to 4 weeks to a fully rolled out process. The pilot runs on a copy of your data alongside the old process, so nothing stops while testing goes on. We run at most two rollouts at a time, so we agree the start date on the consultation.
What do we get at the end and are we dependent on you?
You get code sitting on your Google Workspace account, a description of the process, an execution log and error alerts. The person who owns the spreadsheet learns to change thresholds, recipients and deadlines without us. Maintenance with us is an option, not a condition for what we built to keep running.
Show us the spreadsheet that outgrew itself
The free consultation takes 30 minutes. You tell us which file matters most in your company and what breaks in it most often. We tell you what can be done with Apps Script alone, what needs the permissions sorted out first, and what only works once the data leaves the spreadsheet. You do not have to share any files at this stage.
We run at most two rollouts at a time, so that someone is genuinely sitting on each of them.
Book a free consultationPS. If somebody in your company asked this week which version of that spreadsheet is current, this is exactly the problem. The spreadsheet stays where it is, because the team knows it. What changes is that the data gets one source and the process records what it did and when. That is where the workshop starts.