Retiring the calling spreadsheet (without losing what's in it)

August 28, 2026 · Stakesauce

The calling spreadsheet is never the problem — it's the monument to the problem. Every ward has one, every clerk maintains one, and every one of them is quietly out of date, because a spreadsheet remembers everything and reminds no one. If you've decided to retire yours, here is the whole move, in an afternoon.

Step 1: Export what you have

Get your member list out as a CSV — name, ward, and current calling are the columns that matter. If your sheet has more (dates set apart, tenure), keep those columns; they import too.

Step 2: Import it

Create your stake in Stakesauce (free for 30 days, no card) and run the CSV through the importer. The point isn't a perfect historical record — it's that the people and their current callings exist in the system, so the next calling you track has real names to attach to.

Step 3: Invite the leaders who act

The system only beats the spreadsheet if the notifications reach real inboxes. Invite the stake presidency, the executive secretary, the clerks, and bishops — each linked to their actual position, so “waiting on the bishop” emails an actual bishop.

Step 4: Track one real calling end to end

Don't migrate history. Pick the next calling that comes up in council and run it through — recommendation, approval, interview, sustaining, setting apart, recording. One complete journey teaches the whole presidency how it works better than any tour.

Keep the sheet (for a month)

Seriously — don't delete it. Run both for a few weeks. The day you notice the sheet is behind and the app isn't, the migration is over. And if it goes the other way, your data exports right back out — the honest comparison is here.