Compare
Bookleaf vs. a spreadsheet
This is the comparison that actually applies to most school libraries. Not Koha, not a cloud system — Excel, or a notebook with a ruled line down the middle.
A spreadsheet is a reasonable place to start, and nobody should be embarrassed about running a library on one. It is free, it is already installed, and every librarian can use it without training. Those are real advantages and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
What a spreadsheet cannot do is enforce anything. It records what you type. It does not know that a book is already checked out, that a student is over the limit, or that something has been missing since March.
| Capability | Bookleaf | A spreadsheet |
|---|---|---|
| Recording a checkout | Scan the ID, scan the book. The due date is calculated from your policy. | Type the title, the borrower and a date you worked out in your head. |
| Finding what is overdue | It is on the dashboard when you open the app. | Sort, filter, and compare dates by eye. Every time. |
| Two people working at once | Normal. Staff can work from a second device. | One person has the file open. The other waits, or makes a second copy that then diverges. |
| A student asking "is it in?" | They check on their own phone. | They ask you, and you look. |
| Multiple copies of one title | Each copy tracked separately, with its own accession number and status. | A quantity column that does not know which copy is out. |
| Enforcing borrowing limits | Blocked at checkout, with a reason and a logged override path. | Remembered, or not. |
| Calculating fines | Computed on return from the policy that applied. | Arithmetic, per item, by hand. |
| Annual inventory | Scan the shelves; Bookleaf reports what it never saw. | A printout, a pencil, and a week. |
| A report for the principal | Circulation trends, most-borrowed titles, gate traffic — already there. | A pivot table, if you know how to build one. |
| Someone deletes a row by accident | Records are edited through forms, not free cells. Backups are encrypted files. | It is gone, and you may not notice for months. |
| Cost | ₱1,499, one-time software license. | Free, minus the hours. |
| Learning curve | A few hours, and the documentation is free. | You already know it. This is a real advantage. |
Being fair
Two things a spreadsheet does better
Everyone already knows how to use it
There is no training cost, no adoption risk, and no new person who needs to learn it when staff change. That is genuinely valuable, and moving to any system gives it up. It is the reason to trial Bookleaf during a quiet week rather than the first week of the term.
It bends to anything, immediately
Need to track something odd this month? Add a column. Bookleaf models a library properly, and the cost of a proper model is that it has opinions about what a record contains. If your library needs to record something genuinely unusual, tell us — but a spreadsheet will always win that particular race.
Migration
Your spreadsheet is the starting point, not something to throw away
The years of typing already in that file are the most valuable thing your library has, and the first thing Bookleaf does is import it.
Upload the file, map your column headings to Bookleaf's fields, review what will be created, and import. Rows that cannot be read are reported individually so you can fix them — nothing is silently dropped.
Your columns do not have to be named anything in particular, and they do not have to be in any particular order. That is what the mapping step is for.
Import your spreadsheet this week.
Download Bookleaf, upload the file you already keep, and see your library as a real catalog. Free for 7 days, then ₱1,499, a one-time software license.