Google Sheets sync for watch dealers

For dealers who still live in a spreadsheet

Plenty of dealers run on a sheet and change it all day. Importing once does not help when the sheet keeps moving, and guessing what changed is how books drift. Sheet sync keeps WatchFlow aware of the sheet without letting it overwrite anything silently. If you are still deciding whether to move, read moving from spreadsheets first.

Observe first, then go active

When sync is first switched on it is in Observe only mode. It reads your tabs and fills the review pages, but makes no change lines. When you trust what it reads, the owner taps Switch to active, after which every difference becomes a line to approve. It checks the sheet's modified time first, so an unchanged sheet causes no work, then reads all tabs in one request. It is one-way: WatchFlow never writes to your sheet.

Review every change

Each line answers four plain questions, left to right: where on the sheet (tab, column letter and header, row, with the watch and short serial), what changed there (old to new, "Row deleted" or "New row added"), how WatchFlow looks now for the same field, and one action that says what it does, such as "Move to NYC". Skip leaves WatchFlow as it is. A removed row is only flagged, and nothing is deleted. If WatchFlow changed the same field since, the line says so and you choose Keep WatchFlow or Use the sheet.

Grouped review with ticks

All changes from one sheet row are a single line, for example "Main · row 12 · 6 changes", with small tags (Serial number, Cost, Location). Open it to see every field that will be written, each with a tick that is on by default. Untick a field and only that field is left out. A new row opens as a new-watch review. One Apply button writes the ticked fields, and if a money field is ticked it asks "This changes your books" with a Yes first. Seats that cannot see profit never see profit figures here.

Sheet pulse: nothing unaccounted

A Sheet pulse tab shows when the sheet was last read, how many rows, and an Unaccounted count that should be 0, with, for each tab, how many rows are in step, new, waiting for approval or only shown. Columns WatchFlow deliberately never reads are named rather than silently dropped. Open questions are listed by person, with the dollar gap against the sheet for cost, shipping, payments and sale price.

A detector for layout changes

Every read compares each tab's headers, column order and value patterns with the last read. A new column, a status code nobody has used, or a column that used to hold amounts and now holds words is reported in plain English with its tab, column and rows. Anything that could be mis-mapped is paused until you press "Looked at it: carry on". A column that feeds a WatchFlow field and was renamed or removed cannot be accepted until the header is put back.

Shipping, and lowering a cost after the sale

Shipping on the sheet becomes its own purchase-expense line on the watch, never folded silently into the cost, and a sold watch takes it through the same "Add a cost after the sale" step a person uses. In the other direction, a sold watch now has a Lower the cost button next to Add cost. It asks for an amount and a required reason and writes a dated negative line, kept in the audit trail. Closed books, amounts below what was already paid out and a missing reason are refused.

Availability

Like other advanced WatchFlow features, it is switched on per team and is off by default. If the Google connection is not set up it shows "Not connected" rather than failing. No AI is involved: every line comes from a plain comparison.