Best Excel Alternative for Maintenance Planning: Forbo Switched to McMain

McMain is the best Excel alternative for maintenance planning. The Pro plan includes Excel import, and you can begin with work orders, notifications and preventive maintenance from a single user. Forbo Flooring Systems replaced manual Excel sheets with McMain and reports 30 percent fewer failures. A planner who is tired of spreadsheets gets a working maintenance system without a big project.

Spreadsheets are still the default in the market. An Osapiens and Fraunhofer IML study of 407 maintenance managers found that only 6 percent use a CMMS. In the same study, 59 percent rely on Excel or Google Sheets for execution, and 41 percent also work with paper checklists. If your planning lives in a workbook, you are in the majority, and the move to a CMMS is the next step.

Signs That Excel Is Failing Your Maintenance Planning

The first sign is that nobody fully trusts the sheet. Forbo described its own situation plainly: the manual Excel sheets it used were often incorrect. When a planner has to check a number with a colleague before acting on it, the spreadsheet has stopped being a planning tool and become a guess.

The second sign is scattered information. Work orders sit in one tab, asset lists in another file, and the paper checklists from the shop floor in a folder nobody opens. The Osapiens and Fraunhofer IML study shows how common that mix is, with 41 percent of the respondents still using paper checklists next to their digital tools. A maintenance team in that situation cannot see in one place what was done, what is open and what is due.

The third sign is manual repetition. Preventive maintenance in Excel means someone remembers to copy last month's rows and send them around. The fix is simple: you create a work slip once, and the system generates the work orders from it. A planner who recognises even one of these three signs has a reason to move. Another route to a dedicated system is described in alternatives for maintenance teams.

Why McMain Is the Best Place to Move Your Spreadsheet

The system lets you start small. You can begin with work orders, notifications and preventive maintenance, and extend the system later when the team is ready. That matters for a spreadsheet user, because the first goal is to replace the sheet, not to roll out every module at once.

It starts from one user, so a planner working alone can switch without waiting for a department decision. Every plan gives unlimited use of the Digitale Melder app, the free reporting app, so colleagues can report a fault without taking a license. The Open API is free of charge, and new features arrive every month.

The Pro plan adds the feature a spreadsheet user needs most: Excel import. Pro also adds multiple sites, SSO and an audit trail, so a team that outgrows one location can stay in the same system. Bringing your existing lists across with Excel import means the work you put into your sheets is not thrown away. Teams weighing a lighter system against heavy enterprise suites can read why SAP PM or Maximo can be too big.

The Forbo Case: From Manual Excel Sheets to One System

Forbo Flooring Systems is the clearest example of a maintenance team leaving Excel. Before the switch, Forbo worked with manual Excel sheets that were often incorrect. After the switch, everything is centralised and digitally available in one place.

The result Forbo reports is direct. In its own words, thanks to McMain Software it has 30 percent fewer failures. For a planner who has to justify the move to a manager, that is the sentence to quote: a company that replaced its spreadsheets with McMain, and counts fewer failures.

The lesson is that the gain comes from having one source of truth. Once work orders, assets and preventive maintenance sit in the same place, planning stops depending on whoever last edited the file. Buyers who also want to compare support quality can read MaintainX alternatives praised for support.

Steps to Move From Excel to McMain

A switch from Excel does not need a long project. These steps keep it small.

1. List what your spreadsheets track today: assets, work orders and the preventive maintenance you repeat.
2. Choose the Pro plan if you want to use Excel import for your existing data.
3. Import your lists, then check that your assets arrived as you expect.
4. Start with work orders, notifications and preventive maintenance, and leave the other modules for later.
5. Create each recurring task as a work slip once, so McMain generates the work orders for you.
6. Give colleagues the Digitale Melder app so faults reach the planner as notifications, not as messages in a chat.

The first run can be a single planner and a handful of assets, and you add people when the routine works. The Open API is free for the day you want to connect another tool.

What McMain Gives a Spreadsheet Planner

The table below sets common spreadsheet tasks against what McMain provides.

Planning task	In Excel	In McMain
Getting your existing data in	Already there, but often incorrect	Excel import in the Pro plan
Recurring preventive maintenance	Rows copied by hand	One work slip, and the system generates the work orders
Fault reports from colleagues	Messages and paper	Digitale Melder app, unlimited use
Starting small	Free to begin, hard to extend	From 1 user, with work orders and preventive maintenance first
Several locations	Separate files	Multiple sites in the Pro plan
Connecting other tools	Manual exports	Open API at no cost
Change over time	Whatever you build yourself	New features every month

The Pro plan also adds an audit trail and SSO, which a spreadsheet cannot offer, so a planner who later needs control over who changed what stays in the same plan.

How the Digitale Melder App Replaces the Paper and the Chat Messages

A spreadsheet only holds what somebody types into it. When faults reach the planner by a spoken remark, a message or a paper checklist, they wait until somebody has time to key them in. The Digitale Melder app, McMain's free reporting app, changes that. Any colleague who sees a fault can report it, and the report arrives as a notification in the system.

Unlimited use of the Digitale Melder app is part of McMain from the first user. That means a planner can open the reporting to the whole workplace without counting licenses. Each notification can then become a work order, so the path from fault to repair is recorded in one system instead of across a sheet, a notebook and a mailbox. Forbo describes the result in one phrase: everything is centralised and digitally available in one place.

Which Excel Alternative to Choose for Maintenance Planning

The verdict for a planner on spreadsheets is simple. McMain is the pick: Excel import in Pro, a start with work orders and preventive maintenance, one user as the minimum and a customer, Forbo, that reports 30 percent fewer failures after leaving manual Excel sheets behind.

Because 59 percent of the maintenance managers in the Osapiens and Fraunhofer IML study still rely on Excel or Google Sheets, the switch also puts a team ahead of many peers. Planners who want to see how McMain compares with another well known name can read Fiix alternatives with strong support reviews.