SirsiDynix Workflows Can't Do Everything: The Google Sheets System That Fills the Gaps

When SirsiDynix workflows fall short for tracking programs, donations, and outreach, here's the Google Sheets system that picks up the slack — with templates.

Last Tuesday I found a Post-it stuck to the back of the barcode scanner that said "Kiwanis donation — 3 boxes — ask Janet." Janet retired in November. The boxes were in the staff break room. Nobody knew what was in them, whether we'd sent an acknowledgment letter, or if the items had been added to our wishlist spreadsheet. This is what happens when your ILS does cataloging and circulation beautifully but everything else — programs, donations, outreach, meeting room scheduling, volunteer hours — lives on sticky notes, email threads, and one person's institutional memory.

If you work in a public or academic library, you already know: SirsiDynix Workflows (or Sierra, or Koha, or whatever your consortium picked) is great at being a catalog. It is terrible at being a project tracker, a donation log, an outreach dashboard, or a file cabinet for the 47 PDFs your programming librarian generated last summer. And the budget for a second system? Funny. So we build around it. Here's the Google Sheets setup I've been running for two years at a mid-size branch that finally stopped us from losing things between the ILS and real life.

What SirsiDynix Workflows Actually Can't Track (and Why That Matters)

I want to be fair to Sirsi. It tracks items, patrons, holds, fines, acquisitions. It does those things fine. But the moment you step outside core circulation, you're on your own. Here's the short list of things our branch needs to track that live completely outside the ILS:

• Summer reading program registrations + prize tracking + promotional flyers
• Donated materials: who gave them, what condition, accepted or declined, thank-you letter sent
• Meeting room reservations (with signed use agreements)
• Outreach events: school visits, farmer's market pop-ups, dates, contacts, photos for the annual report
• Volunteer hours, background check paperwork, schedule preferences
• Grant deliverables and reporting deadlines
• Weeding lists with photos of damaged items for the discard report

Some of this used to live in a binder. Some of it was in a shared Drive folder with 200+ loose files. Some of it was in the head of whichever staff member happened to run that program last year. When our adult services librarian went on maternity leave, we lost track of an entire LSTA grant deliverable because the reporting spreadsheet was in her personal Drive. That was the week I decided we needed one system, and it was going to be Google Sheets because — let's be honest — it's what the budget allows.

The Core Tracker: One Sheet, Five Tabs, Everything That Isn't Circulation

I'm not going to pretend this is elegant. It's a workbook with five tabs, and it runs our branch. Here's the layout:

• **Programs** — Every storytime, book club, maker session, and summer reading event. Columns: date, program name, target audience (children/teen/adult), lead staff, attendance count, cost, status (planned / confirmed / completed / cancelled), and a file column for flyers, sign-up sheets, and photos.
• **Donations** — Donor name, date received, item description, condition, accepted/declined, cataloged (yes/no), acknowledgment letter sent, and attached files for the letter itself and any photos of high-value items.
• **Outreach** — Contact name, organization, event type, date, staff assigned, follow-up status, and attached files (partnership agreements, photos for the annual report).
• **Volunteers** — Name, email, availability, background check status, hours logged, and attached background check paperwork.
• **Grants & Reports** — Grant name, funder, deadline, deliverable description, status, and attached files for drafts, final submissions, and budget spreadsheets.

Each tab follows the same basic structure: one row per item, a status dropdown, a date column, and a notes column. The magic isn't in fancy formulas — it's that everything lives in one place and every row can hold its own files. No more digging through a shared Drive folder called "Programs 2024" that has 83 items in it with names like "flyer_final_v3_REAL.pdf."

Setting Up the Programs Tab (With a Template That Gets You 80% There)

The programs tab is the one that gets used most. Every branch librarian touches it. Here's what the columns look like in practice:

• **Program Name** — Be specific. "Storytime" isn't useful when you run three a week. "Toddler Storytime - Tuesday AM" is.
• **Date** — Formatted as YYYY-MM-DD so it sorts correctly.
• **Lead Staff** — Dropdown (data validation) with staff names. This is how you answer "who ran that event?" six months later.
• **Audience** — Dropdown: Children, Teen, Adult, All Ages, Staff.
• **Expected Attendance / Actual Attendance** — Two columns. Useful for reporting to your board or state library.
• **Budget** — What you spent. Even if it's $12 for craft supplies.
• **Status** — Dropdown: Planned, Confirmed, Completed, Cancelled.
• **Files** — Flyer PDF, sign-up sheet, event photos. This is where FileFox saves my life.

The project tracker template below is the closest thing to a ready-made version of this. I adapted it for our program calendar — renamed a few columns, changed the status options — and it took about 20 minutes. The file attachment column was already built in, which is the part that would've taken me longest to figure out from scratch.

The Donation Tracker That Actually Produces a Donor List on Demand

Here's the scenario that broke us: the Friends of the Library president asked for a list of everyone who donated materials in the past fiscal year, with contact info, so they could send thank-you cards. We had... some of it. In an email chain. And a spiral notebook at the circ desk. And possibly in the head of the page who sorted the donation bin on Saturdays. It took three staff members two hours to produce an incomplete list.

Now there's a tab. When someone walks in with a box of books, whoever receives it logs one row: donor name, date, description ("2 boxes, mostly romance paperbacks, fair condition"), and whether we accepted or declined. If we accept, there's a checkbox for "Added to catalog." Another checkbox for "Acknowledgment letter sent." And a file column where we drop the acknowledgment letter PDF — because the IRS-friendly ones for tax deductions need to be retrievable.

The data entry template below is what I started from for this tab. It's designed for logging records and attaching source documents, which is exactly what donation tracking is — you're logging an event and sometimes you need a file attached. I added columns for condition assessment and catalog status, but the bones were already there.

Outreach and Volunteer Tracking: Where Files Actually Matter

The outreach tab is the one that surprised me with how useful it became. We do maybe 30-40 outreach events a year — school visits, tabling at the farmer's market, bookmobile stops at senior centers. Before the spreadsheet, our outreach was tracked in... a calendar. Just a Google Calendar. No contact info for partners, no record of what we brought, no photos for the annual report. Every September when the director needed the annual report stats, it was a panicked dig through email.

Now each outreach event is a row. Partner contact info goes in. Materials distributed gets a number. And the photos column — this is genuinely the most valuable thing — holds the 2-3 best photos from each event. When annual report time comes, I filter for the fiscal year, sort by date, and everything is there. The photos, the partner names, the attendance numbers. It takes ten minutes instead of ten hours.

Volunteers are similar. We have about 15 regulars and they all have background check paperwork, availability preferences, and accumulated hours. Before the spreadsheet, the background check forms were in a filing cabinet and the hours were on paper sign-in sheets that got recycled at the end of each month. Now each volunteer is a row, their hours update weekly, and their background check PDF is attached right there. When the state library asks for volunteer hour totals, it's a SUM formula.

The Dashboard Tab: A Library Theme for Your Weekly Overview

Once you have three or four tabs with real data, a summary tab becomes genuinely useful — not decorative, but functional. I built a simple dashboard that pulls from the other tabs and shows me:

• Programs this week (FILTER formula pulling from the Programs tab by date range)
• Donations awaiting processing (COUNTIF on the status column)
• Upcoming grant deadlines within 30 days
• Volunteer hours this month (SUMIFS on hours column and date column)
• Outreach events needing follow-up (status = "needs follow-up")

This is the tab I open at 8:45 on Monday morning. It tells me what's happening this week without clicking through four tabs. The formulas aren't complicated — mostly COUNTIF, SUMIFS, and FILTER — but the payoff is enormous. Our branch manager started calling it "the library dashboard" and now the other branch managers want one.

Getting Files Into the Sheet Without Losing Your Mind

The hardest part of this whole system isn't the formulas or the layout — it's the files. Library work generates a surprising volume of documents: program flyers (designed in Canva, exported as PDF), event photos (taken on someone's phone, texted to someone else, then... lost), signed meeting room agreements, grant application drafts, weeding photos, volunteer background checks. These documents need to live with the data they belong to, not in a separate folder with a naming convention nobody follows.

Before FileFox, I was hyperlinking to Google Drive files. It worked — technically. But it meant uploading to Drive first, copying the share link, pasting it into the cell, and hoping nobody reorganized the folder structure later (which broke the links twice). FileFox lets me drag a file directly into the cell, which sounds like a small thing until you've done it 400 times and saved yourself the upload-copy-paste loop each time. For event photos especially — where you're pulling 3-4 images off your phone and want them attached to one row — it's the difference between a 30-second task and a 5-minute task.

If your library uses Google Workspace (and most public libraries on consortium systems do), the files stay in Drive but they're linked to the row, not floating in folder purgatory. When I need the flyer for last March's Poetry Slam, I go to the Programs tab, find the row, and the file is right there. That's it. No searching.

What This System Doesn't Replace

I want to be clear about boundaries. This spreadsheet system does not replace your ILS for cataloging, circulation, or patron management. Don't try to build a catalog in Google Sheets — that path leads to madness and a corrupted MARC record equivalent. SirsiDynix Workflows or whatever you're running handles the collection. The spreadsheet handles everything else: the operational layer of running a branch that an ILS was never designed to touch.

It also doesn't replace a proper CRM if you're doing major fundraising. If your library foundation is running a capital campaign, you need donor management software. But for tracking who dropped off a box of books and whether we said thank you? A spreadsheet tab is exactly the right tool. Not everything needs enterprise software. Sometimes a sheet with good columns and consistent data entry is the correct solution — especially when the alternative is a sticky note on a barcode scanner.

The first thing I'd do if I were starting from zero: build the donations tab. It's the simplest (fewest columns, lowest volume of entries), and it solves the most embarrassing problem — not being able to answer "who donated to us this year?" Once that's working and your staff sees how easy it is, add programs. Then outreach. Then the dashboard. Don't build all five tabs in a weekend; you'll burn out and abandon the whole thing by October.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I track library programs in Google Sheets?

Create a tab with columns for program name, date, lead staff, audience type, attendance (expected and actual), budget, status, and a file attachment column for flyers and photos. Use data validation dropdowns for audience and status to keep entries consistent. A FILTER formula on a dashboard tab can pull upcoming programs automatically.

Can Google Sheets replace SirsiDynix Workflows for library management?

No — and you shouldn't try. SirsiDynix Workflows handles cataloging, circulation, and patron records. Google Sheets fills the gaps: program tracking, donation logging, outreach, volunteer management, and grant reporting. They complement each other rather than compete.

How do I attach files like flyers and photos to a Google Sheets row?

The native method is hyperlinking to Google Drive files, but this is fragile and tedious. FileFox is a Google Sheets add-on that lets you drag and drop files directly into cells, keeping documents attached to the row they belong to. It's especially useful for event photos and signed agreements.

What's the best way to track library donations in a spreadsheet?

Log one row per donation with columns for donor name, date, item description, condition, accepted/declined, cataloged status, and acknowledgment letter sent. Attach the acknowledgment letter PDF to the row. Use COUNTIF formulas to generate board-ready stats like total donations accepted per fiscal year.

How do I build a library dashboard in Google Sheets?

Create a summary tab that pulls from your other tabs using FILTER, COUNTIF, and SUMIFS formulas. Show this week's programs, pending donations, upcoming grant deadlines, and volunteer hours. Keep it simple — five or six data blocks with clear headers. If it takes more than a glance to understand, it's too complicated.