Summary Function Between Business and Pro

BeeToTheTee

Apologies if this is the wrong area to post this…

I am a one-person shop that uses Smartsheet to manage various tasks. One of these is the PTA where I volunteer as a board member. I would love to use the dashboard feature to track certain metrics (parent attendance at events and our performance in fundraising) and show these at our monthly meetings. However, dashboards are mostly useless without the ability to summarize certain columns or rows (i.e., the Summary function).

I'm fine with purchasing a Business license, but I do not have three employees (so, there is no need for three licenses). The costs to purchase three licenses would be rough, especially as they'll go unused. I guess I'm curious why such a base piece of functionality is kept away from small organizations who love Smartsheet. Are there any plans (even as a purchasable add-on) to get th summary function without having to buy three licenses?

Matt Johnson

Hi @BeeToTheTee

I too wish there was a single business license option. However for what you are describing, I think you could do this with the standard sheet / metric sheet / dashboard functionality.

The sheet is your main sheet or sheets where you do all your work.

The metric sheet is where you put all your calculations and summary information from the main sheet (this tends to be an unstructured space)

I hope that helps.

Matt

BeeToTheTee

Matt,

I wasn't aware that the widgets could key off cells (as opposed to summary data), but I see exactly what you're saying.

This makes the Smartsheet omission of the summary data even more silly, but…

I appreciate the help, friend! This will do what I need for now. Many thanks! I hope your business has the be$t year$ in history for 2024 and 2025!

—BT

Matt Johnson

Hi @BeeToTheTee

I too wish there was a single business license option. However for what you are describing, I think you could do this with the standard sheet / metric sheet / dashboard functionality.

The sheet is your main sheet or sheets where you do all your work.

The metric sheet is where you put all your calculations and summary information from the main sheet (this tends to be an unstructured space)

I hope that helps.

Matt

BeeToTheTee

Matt,

I wasn't aware that the widgets could key off cells (as opposed to summary data), but I see exactly what you're saying.

This makes the Smartsheet omission of the summary data even more silly, but…

I appreciate the help, friend! This will do what I need for now. Many thanks! I hope your business has the be$t year$ in history for 2024 and 2025!

—BT

BeeToTheTee

@Matt Johnson I wanted to say 'thanks again,' as your reply worked as designed. It's a bit of a longer workaround, but it works just the same. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond to my question.

Matt Johnson

Hey thanks @BeeToTheTee

Your key word was "volunteer". It caught my eye since I live in Tennessee and also use Smartsheet for volunteer work sometimes.

Have a great day!