The spreadsheet input was a mixed success. Organizations that understood the system did well. Those that were new did not.
A major source of errors was with the date field and the use of one vs multiple lines to record different modes. Some work at the database input side could be done to guess date format (see PR# 430842, PR# 430843, PR# 431271 and PR# 431486) but is ``06/04/01'' the short form for June 6 or June 4? The spreadsheet should have specified a standard date format as part of its definition.
A further problem was format. A new release of Corel Office has occurred that has a new version of Quatro Pro -- spreadsheets saved in the new ``qpr'' format are not loadable in any other office program, meanwhile Excel 2000 spreadsheets are not loadable in recent versions of Quatro Pro. CSV format remains the only real inter-operable format.
It is recommended that future systems take spreadsheets via a web upload page. The format can be verified to be CSV format. It may be that it is worthwhile writing an Excel, QuatroPro, ActiveX, Visual Basic or .NET macro to force the file format to be CSV when uploaded. It is outside of the expertise of this consultant to estimate complexity or risk of such an effort.
Feedback from many city coordinators suggested phasing out of the spreadsheet method.