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What are the downsides of using Google Sheets as a data source for dashboards?
Google Sheets is convenient but fragile as a source: anyone can change cells, formats drift, formulas break, performance drops with large data, and there is little validation or history. Dashboards built on it can silently show wrong numbers when someone edits a column.
Risks:
- No enforced data types or required fields.
- Row and cell limits and slow refresh on big sheets.
- Renaming a column or tab can break connections.
- Hard to audit who changed what and why.
If you must use Sheets, lock structure, use data validation, keep a raw input tab separate from calculations, and consider copying the data into a database on a schedule. For anything business-critical, a proper database is more dependable.
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