A spreadsheet is free, familiar, and genuinely adequate for some offices. This is the fair version of the comparison, including the cases where you should keep the spreadsheet.
A spreadsheet costs nothing, everyone in the office already knows how to use it, and it goes exactly where you put it. For a village that receives six requests a year, handled start to finish by one clerk who knows the statute, a well-built spreadsheet (here is ours, free) is a perfectly defensible system. Software that replaces it earns its keep through volume, complexity, and turnover; if you have none of those, you are allowed to keep your spreadsheet, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
The honest question is not whether a spreadsheet can be compliant. It is whether it stays compliant on your worst week instead of your best one.
Every failure mode below is real, observed, and invisible until it costs something:
The spreadsheet is free the way a smoke detector with no battery is free. One late response on a large request, with the 5%-per-day reduction capped at half (MCL 15.234(9)), can forfeit more labor recovery than a year of software costs. One lawsuit, even one the office wins, costs multiples of that; one it loses adds the requester’s attorney fees (MCL 15.240(6)). Against that, Dekree’s FOIA product is published at $199 a month for organizations under 5,000 residents (the whole price list is public). The comparison is not software versus free; it is software versus the expected cost of the spreadsheet’s bad week.
Stay on the spreadsheet while requests are rare, one trained person owns the process end to end, and nothing you redact is truly sensitive. Adopt the template, learn the receipt rule, and calendar the deadlines somewhere that alerts a human.
Switch when any of these becomes true: requests arrive weekly; more than one person touches the process; you redact records that would embarrass the office if the redaction failed; a clerk transition is coming; or you have already eaten one late response. The switch itself is the easy part: your existing log imports during onboarding, and the migration plan covers the rest. Most offices are running inside a week, with no implementation fee.
Dekree is the version of your spreadsheet that enforces the rules instead of remembering them: receipt dates applied per the statute, holiday-aware deadlines, the one extension tracked, permanent server-side redaction, and a complete record trail, with the clerk approving everything that goes out.
At low volume, honestly, yes. An office handling a handful of requests a year, with one careful person applying the rules, can stay compliant on a well-built spreadsheet. The failure modes appear with volume, staff turnover, vacations, and disputes, because a spreadsheet records what you type and enforces nothing.
Three things: the received date (emailed requests are received one business day after transmission under MCL 15.235(1), a rule almost nobody applies by hand), business-day deadline math across holidays, and the extension you took three weeks ago and forgot. None of these are visible in the spreadsheet itself; they surface later as a late response.
If the delay was willful or the request clearly identified itself as a FOIA request, labor charges are reduced 5% per day up to 50% (MCL 15.234(9)). Litigation is costlier: a completely prevailing requester gets mandatory attorney fees, and arbitrary-and-capricious delay draws $1,000 punitive damages plus a $1,000 fine (MCL 15.240(6)-(7)).
Less than staying usually does. Dekree imports your existing spreadsheet log during onboarding, so the history rides along; most offices are running within a week, at published pricing and no implementation fee.
This article is educational information for Michigan public bodies, current as of the publication date. It is not legal advice, and statutes and court decisions change. Confirm specifics with your municipal attorney. Statute text: legislature.mi.gov.