Vault Buddy vs a spreadsheet

Almost everyone starts with a spreadsheet, and for a while it works. It stops working for reasons that have little to do with the spreadsheet being bad at what it does.

What a spreadsheet genuinely does well

It is free, it is instant, everyone can already use it, and you can shape it however you like. For a list of 20 drives that only you touch, a spreadsheet is a reasonable answer and switching would be overkill.

Where it breaks

Question	Spreadsheet	Vault Buddy
Who has this drive right now?	Whatever was typed last, by whoever remembered	The custody record, updated when the handoff was logged
When did it leave, and who accepted it?	No timestamp, no acknowledgement from the receiver	Timestamped transfer with an optional signature
Which drive has the March footage?	Only if someone typed a contents column	Search the snapshot of every drive at once
Was anything deleted since last time?	Not knowable	Snapshot comparison shows added, missing, and changed files
Which drives are overdue?	You notice, or you do not	Overdue drives surface on their own
Can I prove custody to an insurer?	A file anyone could have edited yesterday	An append-only history, exportable as a report

The underlying difference

A spreadsheet records what somebody claims. There is one party, no timestamp, and every cell can be changed later without a trace. A custody record involves two accounts that both hold the same history, written at the moment of the handoff. That is the property an insurer or an auditor is actually asking about.

You do not have to retype anything

Import your CSV or Excel file and map your columns. Vault Buddy detects common column names and flags duplicate serials before creating anything, so the spreadsheet you already maintain becomes the starting inventory.

Import your spreadsheetFree for up to 10 drives.