---
title: "Frequently asked questions — PaprPlain"
description: "Answers about PaprPlain pricing, files, Google Sheets, security, AI, team access, importing, exports and what the product does today."
source: "https://paprpla.in/faq"
---

FAQ

# Straight answers.

Anything not covered here is worth [asking us on a demo call](https://paprpla.in/pricing#demo), and how your data is handled is set out on the [security page](https://paprpla.in/security). The questions that are not about us — why a shared sheet stops working, why the formulas keep breaking — are [answered separately](https://paprpla.in/answers).

Jump to

- [The basics](https://paprpla.in/faq#basics)
- [Getting your workspace built](https://paprpla.in/faq#building)
- [Your data](https://paprpla.in/faq#data)
- [Screens and daily work](https://paprpla.in/faq#screens)
- [People and access](https://paprpla.in/faq#access)

## The basics

### What is PaprPlain?

PaprPlain builds the software your business runs on, out of what you already have. Bring the Excel Sheet you keep today, or just describe how the business works — it reads what you track, works out what connects to what, and builds the tables, the screens to work in, the totals and the checks. A straightforward file opens straight away; otherwise you are shown what it will build and asked only where your data could mean two things, and then you create it. You check what it built — you don’t build it. There is nothing to install, and it starts at ₹599 a month.

### Do I have to set up the tables and screens myself?

No — that is the part PaprPlain does. It reads your file, or listens to how you describe the business, and proposes the whole thing: what to keep track of, how those things link to each other, the screens to work in, the totals worth watching, and the rules that stop wrong entries. Where your data leaves a real question, you are asked it in plain words before anything is created; a straightforward file simply opens. You can still change any of it afterwards, and nothing stops you building a table by hand if you would rather.

### What if I do not have a spreadsheet to bring?

Then describe the business instead. Say what you do and what you keep track of — "we install and service air conditioners, and I need customers, jobs, technicians, equipment and payments" — and you are asked a question or two back, in ordinary words. You are never asked to name a table, pick a column type or design anything. What comes out is the same workspace an uploaded file would have produced.

### Who is it for?

Small businesses where more than one person keeps the same file — shops, distributors, workshops, clinics, tutoring centres, agencies, transport and service teams, wherever they are. You set your currency, language and date format once, and money, dates and invoices follow the way your country writes them from then on.

### Do I need to know anything technical?

No, and there is nothing to install. You open it in a browser like any website. Bring your file or say what your business does, and the workspace gets built — what you do is read it over and correct anything that is not how you work. Everything after that is adding rows and looking at them.

### Does it replace Excel or Google Sheets?

It replaces the job your Excel Sheet was never built for: four people typing into one file, with nothing to stop a wrong entry and no way to tell who changed what — and with the customers in one file, the orders in another, and nothing joining them up. Keep your Excel Sheets for working out a number. Bring the running lists across. Note that when a file is imported, PaprPlain takes the data — not the colours, charts or macros.

### Where does my data live?

On our servers, kept separate from every other business using PaprPlain — every request is tied to your business, so one customer's data can never be returned to another. We do not sell it, we do not use it to train anything, and you can download all of it as Excel or CSV whenever you want. Our [security page](https://paprpla.in/security) sets out exactly how it is handled.

### Is there AI in it, and is my data safe from it?

Yes, and it is kept on a short lead. A model helps read your file when a workspace is built, answers questions in the Analyst, and builds a screen you describe. To do that it sees your column names and a small sample of rows — a handful, never a whole table — and nothing from a column you have marked sensitive. Anything that looks like a password, a card number or a key is stripped out before anything leaves. Nothing is used to train anything, nothing a model says is taken at its word, and a question can only read — it can never change or delete a row. The [privacy policy](https://paprpla.in/privacy#ai) sets out exactly what is sent.

### What does it cost?

₹599 a month for one person; ₹1,999 for up to ten people and five projects; ₹5,999 for unlimited everything. Every plan is the same complete product — the plans differ only in how many people and projects they cover. See [pricing](https://paprpla.in/pricing). On Team and Business, what you share does not carry the small “Created with paprplain” line.

### Is there a free trial, and do I have to put a card in?

Every new workspace runs free for 7 days, and there is no card form anywhere in PaprPlain — we do not take card details at all. When you want to carry on, you choose a plan from inside the product and we turn it on and invoice you separately. If the 7 days run out first, nothing is deleted: the workspace simply waits until you pick a plan.

### Who runs PaprPlain?

Parikshith, a sole proprietor based in Bengaluru, India, trading as PaprPlain. It is a small operation on purpose — the person who answers your email is the person building the product. Read [why it exists](https://paprpla.in/about), or write to [hello@paprpla.in](mailto:hello@paprpla.in) and you will get a real reply. The [terms](https://paprpla.in/terms) and [privacy policy](https://paprpla.in/privacy) say who you are contracting with and what happens to your data.

### How does setup work?

We take on businesses one at a time and set up the first workspace with you, using the file you already keep. You check what PaprPlain built, and your requests reach the people building the product. Everything described on this site works today.

## Getting your workspace built

### What actually happens when I upload my file?

It is read on our side first — every column measured for what it holds, how much of it is filled, whether its values repeat, and whether they turn up in another sheet, which is how a link between two lists is spotted. Anything that looks like a password or a card number is stripped out. Then the shape of the business is worked out, and turned into a proposal: these tables, linked this way, with these screens, these totals and these checks. Simple files open straight into a working project with a summary of what was done. A file with more going on stops and shows you the proposal first.

### What will it ask me?

As little as it can get away with. It only asks when your file genuinely does not contain the answer and guessing would be worse than asking. In practice that is usually one thing: which column identifies a row — the order number, the item code — and, where a column holds stages like Open, Packed, Dispatched, what order those go in and which of them mean the work stopped early. A file lists those words; nothing in it says which comes first. You arrange the list rather than retyping it, and "these are not stages at all" is a real answer.

### What if it gets my business wrong?

Then you correct it, and the cost of being wrong is one of the things it is built around. Where your data could honestly be read two ways, it asks before anything is created, and you can discard the proposal outright; a file with nothing in doubt opens straight away. Either way, anything it built can be renamed, changed or removed like anything else. Where a wrong guess would refuse work your team does every day — the stages an order moves through, for instance — it does not guess at all; it asks. Where being wrong is harmless and obvious, it decides and tells you what it assumed.

### Does it make up data?

No. A proposal can show you a few example rows so you can see the shape of what you are agreeing to, and every value in them reads "Example …". They are never saved. Your real rows come from your file and nowhere else.

### Can I still build things by hand?

Yes, all of it. Start a blank table and type your columns in, write a check yourself, arrange a screen. The automatic path is the quick way in, not the only door — and it is offered rather than forced.

### Can I ask it for a change later, in words?

Yes. Ask for a screen and you get it. Ask for something structural — a new column, a new link, a total — and you are shown what will change, what it touches and whether it can be undone, before it happens. Presentation changes just happen, with an undo. Nothing that deletes data or reaches outside PaprPlain goes ahead without you saying so explicitly.

## Your data

### Can it read my Google Sheet instead of an upload?

Yes. Connect your Google account and pick a Google Sheet, or an Excel or CSV file you keep in Drive. PaprPlain reads it in, and reads it again whenever you ask — you are not re-uploading a file every week.

### What is a project?

One complete business, with everything in it connected. Customers, orders, stock, payments, jobs and staff all live in the same project, because an order has to be able to know whose it is and a payment has to be able to know which order it settles. This is worth being clear about: a project is not one department or one spreadsheet. Most businesses need exactly one. You would keep a second only for something genuinely run apart — a separate branch, or a wholesale side that shares nothing with the service side. A second project is also how you keep something away from people: each project has its own owner, and can be hidden from anybody who should not see it.

### What is a workspace, and how is it different from a project?

A workspace is a whole separate business — its own records, its own people, nothing shared with your others. A project inside it is one complete, connected operation. Almost everybody needs a single workspace with one project in it. You would only start a second workspace if you genuinely run two unrelated businesses and want them kept completely apart. The Solo plan covers one workspace; Team and Business cover as many as you like.

### Do my customers, orders and payments actually link up?

Yes, and that is the difference from a pile of spreadsheets. An order knows which customer it belongs to, a payment knows which order it settles, a line knows which order it is on. Open a customer and you see what they have ordered; open an order and you see who it is for. The link is made on the value your file already holds — the phone number, the order number — so your rows are not rewritten to make it work, and re-reading the file keeps working.

### Can it work out a total for me?

Yes, and it keeps it right rather than working it out once. An order adds up its own lines, a customer adds up their orders, a job knows how many days it took. Change a line and the order total follows, and so does the customer total above it. Nothing has to be refreshed and there is no formula to drag down a column. If a price is missing the total is blank rather than quietly counting it as zero — reading a missing price as free is how a wrong number gets believed.

### What files can I bring in?

Excel and CSV files, as many of them as you keep. You can also start with a blank table and type into it — most people do both.

### What can it hold?

Anything you would keep in an Excel Sheet column: names and notes, money, numbers and percentages, yes or no, dates, email addresses, phone numbers, web links — and photos and documents. That last one matters more than it sounds: a photo of the delivery or a signed copy of the order sits on the row itself, instead of in a folder somewhere else. A column can also hold a link to a row in another table.

### What stops someone entering the wrong thing?

The column does. If a column holds money, "TBC" will not go in, and what comes back names the column and what it needs — "Outstanding must be a number" — rather than "validation error". A currency sign, "1,234.56" or "1.234,56", a code like "1200 USD" or a bracketed negative all go in fine; "TBC" is simply not a number. On top of that you can say what must always be filled in and what must never be entered twice, and write your own checks. And a row cannot point at a customer who is not there, or be left pointing at one you have deleted.

### What is a check?

A rule you write once that runs every time a row is added or changed. It can insist something is filled in, fill something in for you, or mark where a job stands — and it can wait until something else is true first. Switch one off or delete it whenever you like.

### Can I change things later?

Yes, at any point. Start recording something new, rename it, or change what it holds. Rows can be added, edited, deleted and searched as you would expect. Where a change would break something — renaming a customer that orders still point at — you are told what is in the way rather than left with rows pointing at nothing.

### How much can it hold before it slows down?

Ten thousand rows on one screen is the size we build and test against, and at that size it still scrolls, searches and adds up like a short list. A download takes up to fifty thousand rows at a time; past that you take it in parts, and it says so rather than quietly leaving rows out of the file.

### Can I change how money and dates are shown?

Yes. You set the language you work in, the money you deal in, and whether a date like 05/09 means the 5th of September or the 9th of May. Names are then put in the order your own language puts them in, rather than an English one. Set it once and $58,985, 58.985 € or ¥58,985 — and 05/09 — read the way your business already writes them.

### What happens if I disconnect my Google Sheet?

The connection goes and the sheet stops being read again — but everything already brought in stays exactly where it is. The tables, the rows, the screens built on them and the history all carry on working; you are stopping a feed, not deleting a table. You are asked to confirm it first, and it is done from Customize, under Data.

### Can I get my data back out?

Any list downloads as a real Excel file or a CSV, with your own headings, whenever you want. Leaving is a download, not a request you have to make to us.

### What happens to my data if I leave?

It is kept for 90 days, and we get in touch during that time to ask what you want done with it — kept in case you come back, or cleared. Nothing is deleted while that conversation is open. After 90 days it is permanently deleted, and if you would rather it went sooner, say so and it goes. You can download everything as Excel or CSV the whole time. Our [privacy policy](https://paprpla.in/privacy) sets this out in full.

### What if PaprPlain does not do something my business needs?

Tell us. We are small and close to the product, and if what you need is sensible and belongs in PaprPlain, we build it — at no extra charge. You will be talking to the people who make it, and if something genuinely does not fit we will say so straight rather than leave you waiting.

## Screens and daily work

### What do I see when I open a project?

Home — the numbers that matter for your business, worked out from your own rows, with anything that needs attention first. Every number opens the rows behind it, so a figure you do not believe is one click from the list that produced it. Below that: your views of the business, a place to ask questions, and — only if something in your business says who is responsible for what — a list of what is yours to do.

### Can I send invoices from PaprPlain?

Yes. Tap "Invoices and what customers owe" when you start a project, or set up invoicing in one you already have. You get Customers, Invoices with their lines, Payments and Tax rates, all linked. Add lines to a draft, issue it, and it is numbered in sequence and locked. Print it, save it as a PDF, or send a link to it. Record payments against it and the balance goes down by itself; cancel a mistake with a numbered credit note. Your business details, tax rates and numbering start from your country and can be changed. PaprPlain does not keep your books, file tax returns or register invoices for e-invoicing.

### Can I share a report or an invoice with someone outside the business?

Yes. Press Share on an invoice, on any screen — with whatever search and filters you have on — or on the Dashboard, and you get a link that opens without an account. It shows a copy as it was when you shared it, not a way into your workspace, and columns marked sensitive are left out. Choose whether it lasts 7, 30 or 90 days; update it to today’s figures or turn it off at any time. Every link a project has shared is listed in its settings. Invoices and shared pages can also be printed or saved as a PDF.

### What is the “Created with paprplain” line on what I share?

A small line with our logo at the bottom of shared links, printed invoices and downloaded chart images, on the Solo plan and during a trial. It is not there on a paid Team or Business plan. Downloads of your data as Excel or CSV never carry it.

### Can everyone see the numbers we care about without asking for them?

Yes. When someone asks the Analyst a question and gets a total, a count or a breakdown worth keeping, they choose Add to dashboard. The project’s Dashboard shows every pinned answer to everyone in the project — Viewers included — worked out again from the latest records each time it is opened, and its cards can be dragged into place and resized.

### How do I make a screen?

Most of them are already there, built from your own data when the workspace was created. For a new one you write a sentence saying what you want to see — "the products we hold, with stock levels I can correct" — and that screen gets built out of your own rows. Or take one that exists and change it.

### What can a screen look like?

Whichever suits the job: a plain table when you want the detail, a simple list, cards with the photo on them, a board jobs move across, or a month. The board is how you run work — move a card and that job really has moved on. The month view opens on the month your rows are actually in, not on whatever month it happens to be, and says how many rows have no date rather than quietly leaving them out.

### What is on a screen besides the rows?

The totals that matter at the top — what is owed, how many, the average. A search box, and filters for things like city or status. Narrow the rows and the totals above follow, so a total never quietly ignores the filter you set.

### Can I stop a job jumping a step?

Yes. Say what stages your work moves through and you get exactly that: an order cannot be created halfway along, cannot make a move nobody listed, and cannot reopen once it is cancelled. You can say what must be filled in before a move lands — a tracking number before a dispatch — and the move then reads "Dispatch — needs Tracking number" rather than being a button that is not there. This is off unless you ask for it: a column of stages with nothing said about it takes any value in any order, as it always did.

### How does my team know what is theirs to do?

If a table says who is responsible — an "Assigned to" or "Technician" column you already keep — everything across the whole business that is assigned to the person signed in is gathered into one list, soonest first, with what is overdue counted. Finished work comes off it. If nothing in your business says who is responsible for anything, the list is not there at all, rather than being there and empty.

### Can one thing happen automatically when another does?

Yes, for the kind that happens as part of the work: when an order is dispatched, raise a delivery against it; when a row reaches a stage, set a column on it. It runs as part of the save, so the delivery cannot survive an order that failed to save, and if it does not work you are told on the row rather than never finding out. A reminder on a date, or something that runs on a schedule, is not something you can set up in PaprPlain yet, and approvals are not built. Tell us which one you need and we will build it.

### Is there anywhere to leave a note on a row?

Yes, and it sits in the same history as everything else that happened to that row — when it moved stage, what a rule did to it, what somebody said about it. One place, so nobody has to check two to find out why a delivery was late. Notes cannot be quietly edited afterwards; a correction is one more line. Anyone who can see the row can read the history; leaving a note needs the right to change things.

### Is there anything to set up before my team can see it?

No. The screen you arrange is the screen they open — there is nothing to design first and nothing to publish afterwards. Changes are one Save.

### Does it have a dark mode?

Yes — light, dark, or whatever the phone or computer is already set to. It is one button in the corner, and the choice sticks to that device, so the person on the shop floor and the person at the desk can each have it the way they want.

### Can my team add rows themselves?

Yes, straight from the screen — and whatever they add goes through the same checks as everything else.

## People and access

### Can I control who does what?

Yes, from the Team plan up. Three roles: Admin, Editor and Viewer. The person who needs to read the numbers does not need to be able to change them. You can invite people, change a role, and remove someone. Solo is a one-person plan, so there is nobody to give a role to — you are the Admin of your own workspace.

### Can I keep one project away from some of my team?

Yes. Whoever creates a project owns it. Everybody else in the workspace can see it to begin with, and the owner can make any of them an Editor of it, or hide it from them entirely — a hidden project is not in their list, and the server refuses it however they ask for it, rather than the button simply not being drawn. So the accounts project can be yours alone while everybody works in the shop project beside it.

### What if somebody needs more access than they have?

They ask for it from the project itself. A Viewer gets a "Request edit access" button; the owner gets a notification in PaprPlain and an email, and grants it from Project settings. Asking twice in a day does not send a second one, so nobody gets chased by their own button.

### Where do I see what needs my attention?

A bell beside your profile, with a count of what you have not read. An access request or a change to your own access appears there and stays until you open it. It is in PaprPlain and in your email — there is no app to install and nothing asks to send you push notifications.

### Can I stop people changing how the workspace is built?

Yes. By default the people you invite can adjust the workspace as well as work in it, which is usually what a small business wants. An Admin can turn that off, leaving everyone able to add and edit rows but not to change the structure. A Viewer can never change either.

### How do people sign in?

Email and password, plus a six-digit code from an app on their phone — so a password on its own is never enough to get in. Or continue with Google, if that is easier for your team.

### Is there a record of what changed?

Yes, in two places, because they answer different questions. Each project keeps a running Activity list — a row added, a check edited, someone invited — each with the time it happened. Every entry is recorded against the person who made it; putting their name on the line is being built now. Separately, each individual row carries its own history: when it moved stage, what a rule did to it, and any note anybody left on it. That one is part of working with the row, so anybody who can see the row can read it.

## Bring your Excel Sheet across.

Send us the file you keep today — or just tell us how the business runs. On a half-hour call we get your workspace built, and you decide from there. Nothing to install.

[Book a demo](https://cal.com/parikshithv/30min) [See pricing](https://paprpla.in/pricing)