Rule-Based Work-Order Checking: A Simple Alternative to Complex Excel Formulas

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If your team lives in Excel, it is tempting to solve every work-order problem with another formula, another helper column, or another macro.

Over time that usually turns into a “spreadsheet monster”:

dozens of hidden columns,
formulas that only one person really understands,
and a strong fear of touching anything in case it breaks.

In this article we will look at a different way to think about work-order checking:
rule-based checking. Instead of encoding your logic in long formulas, you express it as simple, readable rules such as:

Rule 1: Part Number contains SHF-
Rule 2: Description contains Front panel
Rule 3: Description contains 3.0 mm

You can absolutely build these checks in Excel – and we will show how – but we will also see why, for many shops, a small helper app like
Work Order Checker makes the job much easier to manage.

Where Excel Formulas Start to Hurt

Excel is incredibly powerful. Functions like FILTER, SEARCH, XLOOKUP, and pivot tables can do a lot of the heavy lifting in work-order review.

The problems usually appear over time:

1. Formulas Are Hard to Read Under Pressure

Imagine you are in the middle of a rush job and you see a formula like:

=FILTER(A2:K500,
   ISNUMBER(SEARCH("SHF-",A2:A500)) *
   (ISNUMBER(SEARCH("3.0",E2:E500))+ISNUMBER(SEARCH("3.0T",B2:B500))))

Technically this works. But when something looks wrong, you have to mentally parse the logic:

Which column is which?
What happens if the text is written slightly differently?
Did someone copy-paste it from a previous project and forget to change part of the formula?

2. Logic Is Scattered Across Many Cells

In real-world workbooks you often see:

one helper column to mark shelf panels,
another for front panels,
another for a specific thickness,
plus filters and pivot tables on top.

The actual review logic is spread over multiple sheets and multiple columns. That is hard to audit and hard to hand over to another engineer.

3. Small Layout Changes Break Everything

The first time you build your workbook, all the references line up perfectly. Then a future export:

adds a new column in the middle,
renames “Description” to “Item description”,
or inserts a new header row.

Suddenly your carefully crafted formulas are off by one column, or they quietly return the wrong rows.

4. Reuse Is Painful

If you receive work orders from:

three different customers,
each with a slightly different template,

you either maintain three separate formula sets or you constantly tweak one master workbook before every job. It works, but it is fragile and easy to get wrong when you are busy.

What We Mean by “Rule-Based Checking”

Rule-based checking is a different way to structure the same logic you would normally bury inside formulas.

Instead of saying:

“Filter the rows where column C contains ‘SHF-’ and column F contains ‘3.0T’…”

you write explicit rules like:

Rule 1: Part Number contains SHF-
Rule 2: Description contains Front panel
Rule 3: Description contains 3.0 mm or 3.0T

Each rule is an independent, human-readable statement. You can hand the list to a colleague and they will immediately understand what the review is trying to check.

The nice property of rule-based thinking is that it is implementation-agnostic:

You can implement the rules in pure Excel.
You can implement them in a specialised tool.
Or you can use a mix of both.

The important part is that your ruleset becomes the “single source of truth” for how you review work orders.

Implementing Rules in Excel

If you are comfortable with formulas, you can implement basic rule-based checking in vanilla Excel.

Here are three common approaches.

Option 1 – Helper Columns with SEARCH

For each rule, create a helper column that evaluates to TRUE or FALSE.

Example for “Description contains Front panel”:

=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("Front panel", [@Description]))

Pros:

Very transparent; you can see TRUE/FALSE for each row.
Easy to filter or sort by each rule.

Cons:

Takes up a lot of horizontal space for many rules.
Easy to accidentally overwrite or delete a helper column.

Option 2 – FILTER for Each Rule on Its Own Sheet

For every rule, set up a filtered view:

=FILTER(Table1, ISNUMBER(SEARCH("SHF-", Table1[Part Number])))

Pros:

Each rule has its own tab with matching rows.
Feels similar to how production cells use separate lists.

Cons:

You have to maintain one formula per rule.
If the table name or column names change, all affected formulas must be updated.

Option 3 – Combined Logic with OR/AND Conditions

Sometimes you want “Description contains 3.0 mm or 3.0T”.

In Excel this becomes something like:

=FILTER(Table1,
   ISNUMBER(SEARCH("3.0 mm", Table1[Description]))
 + ISNUMBER(SEARCH("3.0T", Table1[Description])) > 0)

The more conditions you add, the more cryptic the formula becomes. It is still possible to manage, but you are relying on future-you (or a colleague) to remember what the logic was supposed to be.

Why a Dedicated Checker Makes Rules Easier to Manage

This is the point where many teams decide to move the rule implementation into a specialised tool and keep Excel as the data source and final reporting format.

Work Order Checker is built specifically for this use-case:

It opens your existing work-order spreadsheets (Excel, CSV, TSV, or text files).
You pick which columns to display so you are not scrolling through noise.
You add the strings you care about (for example SHF, 3.0T, “Shelf panel”, “Front panel”).
You turn those strings into rules like “Part Number contains SHF” or “Description contains Front panel”.
Each rule gets its own filtered grid, and the app can export a new Excel workbook with one sheet per rule plus a statistics sheet.

The difference compared to formulas is mostly about structure and visibility:

1. Rules Live in One Place

Rather than having logic scattered across helper columns and hidden sheets, you have a single list of rules:

“Part Number contains SHF”
“Description contains Front panel”
“Description contains 3.0 mm”

You can reorder them, rename them, or temporarily disable them without touching your source spreadsheet.

2. Layout Changes Are Less Scary

If a column name disappears or changes in the next export, the rule that depends on it simply shows an empty grid. That is an obvious “something is wrong” signal, instead of a silent formula error buried in a cell.

3. The Same Rules Work on Every File with the Same Structure

Once you have set up rules for a given customer or ERP export, you can save them as a layout template. The next time you receive a similar work order:

Open the new file.
Load the layout template.
Review grids and statistics.
Export a clean workbook.

What used to be a 30-minute Excel wrestling session becomes a 2- or 3-minute routine.

4. Excel Stays Where It Shines

Excel is still ideal for:

ad-hoc calculations,
extra pivots,
charting,
and combining work-order data with other sources.

A dedicated checker does not replace Excel; it just takes over the repetitive, error-prone filtering logic so the formulas you keep are simpler and safer.

When Formulas Still Make Sense

Rule-based checking does not mean you should never write another formula.

Excel is still the right choice when:

You need numerical calculations (for example computing total weight, area, or cost per family).
You want to model scenarios (for example “what happens if we change thickness on these parts?”).
Your work-order data is already part of a larger workbook with other engineering calculations.

The trick is to avoid mixing concerns:

Use a tool like Work Order Checker to prepare clean, filtered tables for each part family or production cell.
Then use Excel for the engineering math on top of those clean tables.

That way, your formulas operate on well-defined inputs instead of on raw, messy exports.

How to Start Moving from Formulas to Rules

You do not have to throw away your existing spreadsheets. A practical migration path looks like this:

Step 1 – List Your Current Checks in Plain Language

Take your main work-order review workbook and write down, in words, what each helper column and filter is trying to do.

Examples:

“Find all shelf panels”
“Find all front panels”
“Mark parts with 3 mm thickness”
“Highlight rows where routing is missing or still ‘N/A’”

This becomes your rule list.

Step 2 – Express Each Check as a “Column Contains Text” Rule

For each check, decide:

Which column carries the relevant information (Part Number, Description, Material, Routing…)
Which substring or keyword identifies the thing you care about.

For instance:

Part Number contains SHF- → shelf panels
Part Number contains SUP- → support brackets
Description contains Front panel → front panels
Description contains 3.0 mm or 3.0T → 3 mm thick parts

You can immediately start implementing this in Excel if you want (with helper columns or filters), but keeping the rules in a separate list already makes your logic clearer.

Step 3 – Try Those Rules in Work Order Checker

To see what rule-based checking feels like in practice:

Download and install Work Order Checker on a Windows machine.
Open a recent work-order export.
Add the columns you care about to the “Columns to show” list.
Enter your keywords as strings and build rules from them.
Open the statistics window to see row counts per rule.

Compare this to your existing Excel workbook. You should see the same subsets of rows, but now the checks are transparent and easy to tweak.

Step 4 – Save a Layout Template for Your Most Common Work-Order Format

Once you are happy with the rule set for a particular customer or ERP export, save it as a layout template. From then on:

You do not have to rebuild formulas for every job.
New people on the team can review work orders just by loading the template and checking the statistics and grids.

Bringing It Together

Excel formulas and macros are powerful, but they are not always the best way to capture your work-order review logic. When that logic turns into a tangle of helper columns and hard-to-read expressions, it is a sign you might benefit from a rule-based approach.

By:

writing your checks as simple, readable rules,
keeping those rules in one place,
and using a dedicated tool to apply them to your spreadsheets,

you can make your work-order review process easier to understand, easier to maintain, and easier to share with the rest of your team.

If you have not seen the first article in this series yet, you can read
How to Review Large Work-Order Spreadsheets in Minutes Instead of Hours for a full walkthrough of the overall process.

And if you would like to try rule-based checking on your own work orders, download
Work Order Checker for Windows, point it at your latest export, and see how it feels to replace fragile formulas with clear, reusable rules.