Hand the checklist over in Excel

The client's in-house team works in Excel. They want the deal checklist as a sheet they can filter, sort and add up: the purchase price adjustments, the outstanding deliverables by party, the dates by which each condition must be met. The board exports to Excel in three ways, and a sheet you exported can come back into the board with the client's edits.

Two questions decide which export you use. Will the sheet come back to you with changes? And does the reader need to calculate with the figures?

Export the whole board, or some of it

1. Open the deal's board. The export follows the filter and sort you have on the board, so filter first if the reader should only see part of it.

2. Click Board, then Export.

   

3. Under Excel, choose All columns (classic) for a sheet of every task and every column. This is the export to use when the sheet will come back to you with changes.

4. Or tick the rows you want first and choose Selected rows. To hand over one workstream, open the menu of its task group, choose Select all tasks, and export Selected rows.

Build a sheet the client can calculate with

The custom export gives you a sheet laid out for the reader rather than for the board: one board column per sheet column, the headings you choose, and figures Excel recognises as numbers, amounts and dates.

1. Click Board, then Export, and under Excel choose Custom. Custom Excel export opens. The first time, it holds a row number column and the task title, or your firm's default layout if an admin has set one.

2. Click Add column for each column the reader needs. Give it a heading, and under Source choose the board column it reads from, or Group name for the task group each task sits in.

3. Under Cast as, tell Excel what the values are: Number, Currency, Percent, Date, Yes/No or Text. A purchase price kept in a text column only adds up in Excel when it is cast as Number or Currency. For numbers, amounts and dates, set a Number format. The information icon next to it lists Common formats to click, such as an amount in kroner or a date with the month as a word.

   

4. Under Sheet options, choose the layout. Include subtasks puts the subtasks on their own rows. Add auto-filter gives every heading a filter button. Freeze header row keeps the headings in view as the reader scrolls.

5. On the row number column, choose the Numbering: Board index (1.2.3) to match the numbers on the board, Sequential (1, 2, 3), Roman (i, ii, iii) or Letters (a, b, c).

6. Check the Live preview. It shows the first rows exactly as they will be exported. A value in italics could not be cast and goes into the sheet as text, typically an amount with words in it or a date written in a way Excel does not read.

   

7. Click Export. Your changes to the layout save with the board as you make them, so the next export starts from it. Reset to default starts over, and if your firm has set up templates, Apply template gives you one of the Organisation templates.

Bring the client's edits back into the board

When the client returns the sheet with their updates, import it into the board rather than copying the changes by hand. This works with a sheet from All columns (classic) or Selected rows, not from Custom.

1. Click Board, then Import, and stay on the Excel tab.

2. Choose From Juristic export and upload the file.

   

3. Click Import. The tasks the client changed are updated. Tasks no one touched in the sheet keep any changes colleagues made on the board in the meantime, and nothing is deleted from the board because it is missing from the sheet. A column the client added comes in as a text column.

Which export for which reader

Tips from practice

• The board stays the master. Send the sheet, but make the decisions on the board. If two people edit the same task, one on the board and one in the sheet, the import takes the sheet's version of that task.
• Leave the internal columns out. All columns (classic) includes every column. When the sheet is not coming back, the custom export lets you send only the columns the client needs.
• The firm's columns on every board. Your organisation admin can set up a custom Excel layout as an organisation template, so every board's export starts from it; see give every board the same Excel columns.

To bring a tracker that did not come from Juristic into a board, see bring an Excel tracker into a board. For a report to read rather than to work in, see send the client a status report in Word.