Spectivon vs. permit tracking spreadsheets
Spreadsheets and manually maintained permit lists work until the portfolio grows: every permit, date, and condition is typed in by hand, where each value came from lives in someone's memory, and the sheet goes stale as documents change. Spectivon extracts permits and conditions from your own documents with a citation to the source page, requires human review before anything becomes record, and keeps the matrix and calendar current as documents change.
The problem with hand-maintained lists
Someone, often an outside consultant, has to read each permit, type its number, dates, and conditions into a sheet, and update it every time a revision or agency letter arrives. Copies get emailed around until no one is sure which version is current, and a plain spreadsheet does not show who changed what. Sources are rarely linked, conditions with relative or recurring triggers are hard to represent, and different projects end up with different columns.
What Spectivon does instead
It extracts permits and conditions from the documents already in your SharePoint. A permit number, date, or status is recorded only when the document's own words state it for that permit. Candidates arrive as New Permits Found, Proposed Updates, or Ambiguous Matches for a person to accept or reject, and rejections are remembered.
Conditions with real trigger logic
Conditions are tracked as fixed dates, recurring requirements, milestone-relative dates, or ongoing obligations. Those that cannot yet be scheduled appear in an Unscheduled Obligations panel instead of disappearing. The Compliance Calendar shows upcoming and overdue items across every asset.
Where every value came from
Each permit field keeps a record of where it came from, the more authoritative source wins when documents disagree, and status changes are logged. Deleted permits and conditions can be restored, and duplicates can be merged.
Same record as diligence
When the project was diligenced in Spectivon, the risk register and permit conditions found then carry into ownership on the same record instead of being rebuilt in a tracker.
Side by side
| Permit tracking spreadsheets and manually maintained lists | Spectivon | |
|---|---|---|
| Data entry | Typed by hand from each document | Extracted from your documents, then reviewed by a person |
| Source of each value | Depends on the person who entered it | Document and page link on every value, in the document's own words |
| Conflicting documents | Whoever updates last wins | Arbitrated by source authority, ambiguous matches sent for review |
| Condition triggers | Usually a single due-date column | Fixed, recurring, milestone-relative, and ongoing triggers |
| Staying current | Manual updates | Daily change detection and re-extraction, with a What Changed view |
| Portfolio-wide view | Combining a separate sheet for each project | One permit matrix and compliance calendar across all assets |
| Schedule | A separate tool | Critical-path schedule in the same platform, with dates proposed from your documents for review |
| Best for | A few permits with stable documents | Many projects and documents that change over time |
Permit tracking spreadsheets and manually maintained lists fits better when
- A handful of permits on one asset that rarely change.
- A process that is already well maintained and does not need to draw from documents.
Spectivon fits better when
- Dozens of projects with hundreds of permits and conditions.
- Needing every value traceable to a source page for audits or lenders.
- Wanting extraction and updates to keep pace with new and revised documents.