Next thing they know, they're using it on a regular basis, perhaps patching up some shortcoming in the set-up of the supposedly all-singing, all-dancing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system which means that month end is just a tad less painful than otherwise. Why look for the real solution when the work around manages OK? I mean, it's not properly auditable and the source data is hard to trace – but it does the job. Then again, the author shares the T7 model. Usually they hear someone down the pub complaining about a similar problem – "hey, I've got a neat little spreadsheet that kind of fixes that..." It's now public. It's still unofficial, mind you – so it isn't subject to the normal procedures and controls. Dangerous stuff. Over time, what started off as a simple one-task sheet grows topsy turvy, so it ends up with the grace and elegance of a pregnant three-legged camel.
So, as a matter of principle, my own SWSs ("skunk-works spreadsheets") are kept away from my superiors and anyone outside the department. And on no account should SWSs be shown to internal or external auditors. Sadly, not everyone shares my... innate underhandedness? common sense? Whatever. Unfortunate, that. You see, when HM Revenue & Customs sent us a letter of enquiry about how we were treating our allegedly taxable subcontractors, the tax team started to panic. The head of tax (HoT) had been keeping her carefully manicured finger on that particular pulse though her own patched-together SWS. And thanks to the taxman's sudden interest, it looked like we were going to have to go public with the contents. FD's failure to understand and head off the looming freelancer tax cock-up, meant he was about ready to offer the tax department anything it wanted to get himself... sorry, the company out of the hole. That "anything" turned out to be me. Despite my pleading, I was drafted with immediate effect as part of the hastily assembled Senior Corporate Internal Review Team. (Which makes me, it seems, a bit of SCIRT.)
The head of tax admitted that her SWS was not quite "on the money" – an unfortunate turn of phrase. So she needed the assistance of a spreadsheet jockey to "clarify one or two issues" around the sub-contractors' tax before HMRC turned up. By that time, I'd had a chance to inspect this vital workbook – and, as I feared, I was in trouble. First, I had to get up to speed on what it was supposed to be saying. Bear in mind, I'm the Spreadsheet Jockey, not the Tax Return Jockey (although I'm starting to think we could do with one of those). Then I had to find out how it had been put together. At that point, I would just be about ready to start undoing the years of haphazard extensions and tweaked dependencies, ready to make some sense of the data. So awful was the prospect of this exploration, that I even offered to build a new spreadsheet from scratch. But all this fell on deaf ears.
So I've been left on my own, trying
to spin gold out of this junk, with only our reputation with HMRC on the
line. FD is threatening to send me on a tax
refresher course – or, worse still, second me "for an extended period" to
the tax department. My only hope is that HoT will talk FD out of the idea on
the grounds she'd rather have another dozen tax investigations on her hands
than me. (A few off colour jokes should see to that.) Or, that she stops trying
to spreadsheet her way out of tax complications. Never send a girl to do a
woman's job...