Limitada vs a spreadsheet: managing your company's documents

This article does not argue that every company should drop its spreadsheet. An Lda with a single partner-manager, one corporate event per year, and no external accountant asking for information frequently can use a table and folder for years without much friction. The point at which the combination stops being acceptable and starts to be a source of friction shows up for three reasons, and this guide is about recognizing when that happens.

The starting point: spreadsheet plus shared folder

The typical setup, one that emerges organically, has two pieces:

• A summary spreadsheet. One row per company (or one tab per company, if there are several) with columns for NIF, Certidão Permanente code, RCBE code, date of the last RCBE declaration, current articles-of-association version, accountant, bank, and so on. The sheet lives in Google Sheets or Excel on OneDrive, shared with the other partner, the accountant and sometimes the lawyer.
• A shared folder for the documents. In Google Drive or OneDrive. Subfolders by type (Articles of Association, Minutes, RCBE, Invoices, Banks) or by year (2024, 2025, 2026). Each document goes in as a PDF. Minutes end up with names like minutes_12_accounts_approval_v2.pdf or minutes_final_v3_signed.pdf.

This setup works because it can be free (or is already included in tools the company uses), is familiar, and requires no new tool to learn. It is also enough for an Lda in minimal mode: single partner-manager, articles of association that rarely change, one set of minutes a year (the accounts-approval one), and the annual RCBE confirmation (due by 31 December, or handled together with the IES when there is nothing to update).

Where the spreadsheet-plus-folder setup works fine

Before the list of frictions, it is worth being explicit about the cases where this setup is reasonable:

• Single partner-manager, doing everything alone, who knows where each file is because they put it there.
• Very low document volume: stable articles of association, one annual set of minutes, the annual RCBE confirmation tracked in a manual calendar reminder.
• No frequent sharing with the accountant. The accountant handles only bookkeeping and year-end filings; they do not routinely pull corporate documents.
• Personal discipline to maintain the conventions. The spreadsheet and folder work if, and only if, the person maintaining them is disciplined about naming, columns, and versions. It takes only one partner saving a file outside the naming pattern, or a version created without following the agreed convention, for the system to start to degrade.

Under these conditions, the payoff from switching to a dedicated tool is marginal. That is worth acknowledging.

Where the combination starts to fail

The tipping point arrives on three fronts, often at the same time. Before the three frictions, one clarification to avoid a straw-man argument: Google Drive and OneDrive do keep file version history (including for PDFs) and record versions, activity, dates and the account that uploaded or replaced the file. On permissions, Google Drive and OneDrive for Business/SharePoint let you restrict access to subfolders inside a broader shared folder (with manual configuration of those exceptions). Consumer OneDrive does not offer that: sharing a folder grants access to everything inside it, and the only way to give someone differentiated access is to share each folder separately (see Microsoft’s OneDrive sharing documentation). The three frictions below are not about the absence of those capabilities in Drive or Business/SharePoint; they are about the manual configuration work those capabilities require and about the lack of built-in structure for the corporate life of an Lda.

1. Version control scattered across filename conventions. Per-file version history exists in Drive and OneDrive, but as soon as the team also keeps versions as separate files, filenames like minutes_12_v2.pdf, minutes_12_v2_MS_ok.pdf, minutes_12_final.pdf, minutes_12_FINAL_REALLY.pdf start to appear. When the accountant, the bank or a new partner asks “which is the current version of the articles of association?”, the answer depends on who knows where to click. A tool that treats each corporate document as an entity with named versions (not as a sequence of PDFs in a folder) removes the ambiguity.

2. Sharing with the accountant (and with third parties). In Google Drive and in OneDrive for Business/SharePoint, you can restrict a subfolder inside a broader shared folder (see Microsoft’s documentation on breaking permission inheritance, which covers both Microsoft products), but each exception has to be designed, applied and maintained by hand, and each new person who joins means revisiting the rules. Consumer OneDrive does not even offer that option: if the accountant needs access to some folders but not others, those folders have to be shared separately, one by one. A system built around the Lda delivers a predefined accountant role: read access to the company’s data, write access to the accounting areas (expenses, invoicing, reconciliation), and company-management actions kept restricted, with no folder administration required.

3. Deadline awareness. The spreadsheet records what happened; it does not warn about what is coming. The annual RCBE confirmation, the approaching IES deadline, the annual Modelo 22 deadline (subject to any extensions the tax authority publishes), the annual accounts-approval resolution: none of that jumps from the sheet into your inbox. People doing this for years end up creating manual reminders in Google Calendar and hoping not to delete them by mistake.

If these three points sound familiar, the spreadsheet and folder are already costing more time than they save.

Side-by-side comparison

The table below compares the two setups on the dimensions that matter most to a small Lda. The columns use “Google Sheets + Drive” as the reference; the analysis applies equally to Excel + OneDrive.

The table does not cover the other side of the product (expense extraction, bank reconciliation, invoicing via Moloni), which exists in Limitada and not in a spreadsheet; for those aspects, see the deductible-expenses guide and the expenses feature page.

How to decide

Four quick questions to size up your Lda’s needs:

1. How many people need to work on the documents? If it is only the single partner-manager, the sheet and folder are enough. If there are two or more partners, an external accountant, and occasionally a lawyer or an investor, the manual maintenance of permissions starts to add up.

2. How often do you need to know “which is the current version”? If the articles of association have never changed and minutes are rare, the naming convention is enough. If the articles were amended in recent years, or if minutes are frequent, versioning built into the corporate document itself saves a lot of email back-and-forth.

3. How many times a year do you need to share the Company Card (NIF, address, codes) with a bank, a new client, or the accountant? If it is once or twice a year, manual copy-paste is fine. If it is monthly (because new clients require the company’s paperwork before they pay), a button that exports to text, image or PDF removes real friction.

4. Have you ever missed a deadline? If so, the spreadsheet is not doing the full job. A system that watches the deadlines for you, and warns in time, solves this.

If your answers are “many”, “often”, “several times” and “yes”, Limitada was designed precisely for this case. If your answers go the other way, the sheet and folder remain the right answer for now.

What Limitada does specifically

Limitada solves the three frictions above, plus a few more, inside a single window. Concretely:

• Versioned documents. Articles of association, minutes book, RCBE, contracts: every change is added to the version history automatically with date and author. The current version is always visible; the previous ones are one click away. See Versioned documents.
• Synchronized Certidão Permanente. Paste the access code once; the official data (name, NIF, address, share capital, management) is imported and kept in sync automatically. The RCBE code sits alongside. See Certidão Permanente integration.
• Exportable Company Card. One click to copy as text, generate an image, or generate a PDF: useful when a client or a bank asks for the company’s paperwork by email.
• Signature collection on corporate decisions. A sequential flow for managers to sign deliberations, contracts and declarations inside Limitada, in the defined order, with email notifications at each step. The articles of association and the minutes book are handled in their own separate flow (they do not go through signature collection). The feature is included in every plan, but because it involves at least two managers with app access, it needs the Starter plan or above (which allows inviting more users). See Signature collection.
• Dedicated accountant role. On the Starter plan or above, you can invite the accountant with a predefined role: read access to the company’s data (documents, official codes, invoices) and write access to the accounting areas (expenses, invoicing, bank reconciliation). Company-management actions stay restricted to the partner-manager. No custom permission setup is required.
• Tracked deadlines. RCBE, IES, Modelo 22 and IRC payments on account: Limitada tracks the legal deadlines and sends reminders in time.

For the other side of the product (expenses, bank reconciliation, invoicing), see the expenses feature page. For the general philosophy of the product, the complete guide to the Portuguese Lda sets the context for why Limitada exists.

How to migrate

If you decide to try Limitada, migrating the existing documents is straightforward:

1. Create a free account: 1 user, 1 company, no credit card.
2. Paste the Certidão Permanente code: the official company data is imported automatically.
3. Upload the existing PDFs: articles of association, minutes, RCBE, contracts. Each document is uploaded as its current version; from then on, every change is added to the version history.
4. Store the RCBE code: it sits alongside the other official data in the Company Card.
5. Invite the accountant (optional, on Starter or above): they come in with the predefined accountant role, no additional setup required.

You can keep the spreadsheet as an archive if you prefer; nothing forces you to delete it.