Comparison
Greenlit vs Google Sheets for entertainment teams
Almost every entertainment company has started with a spreadsheet. Here's where it holds up, and where it starts costing you more time than it saves.
What Google Sheets is good at
- Free, universal, and nobody needs training to open it.
- Good for a one-off list, a quick budget, or anything that lives and dies in a single afternoon.
- Formulas can do real work if someone on the team is fluent in them.
What Greenlit is good at
- A submission is a structured record with a form, a coverage status, and a rights position attached, not a row that breaks if someone sorts the wrong column.
- No version conflicts, no "final_v3" tabs, no formula that quietly stopped working three rows down.
- Package sharing and business affairs automation that a spreadsheet has no way to do.
- Deal intelligence and mandate matching running in the background, nothing a formula can do for you.
Greenlit vs Google Sheets, feature by feature
← Scroll to compare →
 | Google Sheets | |
|---|---|---|
| Submission intake | Automatic routing and record creation | Typed in by hand, one row at a time |
| Business affairs forms | Workflow-automated and built into your submission pipeline | Not included |
| Rights tracking | Attached to the project record | A separate tab, if it exists at all |
| Sharing link analytics | Know who opened it and when | Not built in |
| Access control | Workspace-scoped, per-request | Whoever has the linkGoogle Sheets permissions work at the file level, not the row or field level. |
| Deal intelligence | Live feed of deals, mandates, and first-look news from 60+ trades, matched against your slate automatically | Not tracked. A cell doesn't read Deadline for you |
| Mandate & target matching | Buyer and talent mandates matched against your submissions and slate, with AI-suggested targets and drafted outreach | Not tracked. Matching a project to the right buyer is a manual list |
| Relationship mapping | See the path to any exec through people and projects you already know | Not tracked. Relationships live in someone's head |
| Views, grid, kanban, and timeline | Kanban, timeline, and grid are all native and included on every plan. | One flat grid. No kanban, no timeline, no saved views to switch between. |
| CRM & task management | Every person and company tracked with a full contact record, tasks tied to submissions and deals, and a live feed of who submitted what and when | No CRM and no tasks. A contact is just a column, and nothing connects it to what that person has sent you. |
| Contact & credit enrichment | Add a person or company and Greenlit automatically pulls their credits and past projects | Not tracked. A spreadsheet only knows what you type into it |
| Getting your data in | Upload the spreadsheet directly, or send it over and the team maps it for you | N/A |
| Built for entertainment | Yes | No, it is a general spreadsheet |
Where each one fits
Choose Google Sheets if
- You enjoy clicking link within link within link, constantly re-enabling sharing permissions, and getting lost in folders of documents where no one can tell which version is current.
- You don't need mandates matched against your slate automatically, and you're fine tracking buyers from memory.
Choose Greenlit if
- You want to forward a submission and have it logged and matched against a mandate, yours, someone you know, or a buyer's, automatically.
- You want warm introductions surfaced to the people you're already trying to reach.
- You want dynamic lists, writers to watch, directors to watch, your slate, that build and stay current on their own, not a doc someone maintains by hand.
- You want a more modern way to manage your entertainment business, submissions, IP, companies, contacts and more.
Where it tends to break down
A spreadsheet has no idea what a submission release form is, so getting one sent and filed is a manual task that happens outside the sheet, usually over email, usually inconsistently. Rights tracking ends up on a second tab that someone has to remember to update when a deal changes. None of this is a flaw in Sheets; it's just not what a spreadsheet is for. The workflow structure has to come from somewhere else, and today that somewhere else is a person keeping it all straight in their head. It also becomes a staffing decision more than a tooling one. Logging every submission by hand falls to whoever has the time, usually the newest person on the team, and the number of submissions a company can actually handle quietly starts to depend on that one person's week.
Getting your data in
Getting your data in is the easiest of all, you can import directly from Google. No download needed. Just connect, import, and start experiencing a better way to run your entertainment business.
Common questions
Can I import my submission tracker spreadsheet into Greenlit?
Yes. Import directly from Google, no download needed. Or export to CSV and upload it yourself.
What happens to formulas and conditional formatting when I move over?
Formulas export as their calculated values, not the formula itself, and formatting doesn't carry over, CSV is a plain-data format. If a formula is doing meaningful work (a status calculation, a rollup), note what it does before exporting so it can be rebuilt as a real field.
Does Greenlit tell me what's happening in the industry, or just track my own submissions?
Both. A live feed surfaces deals, renewals, and first-look news from 60+ trades, matched against the mandates and projects you're tracking. A spreadsheet only knows what's typed into it. It has no idea what's moving in the industry.
Is my data secure while I move it over?
Everything you upload is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.3) and at rest (AES-256). Your workspace is scoped to your organization and every request is filtered by workspace before it returns anything, other accounts never see your submissions, scripts, or contracts. Greenlit never uses your content to train AI models, and you can request a full export or deletion of your data at any time.
See how easy it is to run your entertainment business on Greenlit
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