Data cleaning that holds up next month too
Anyone can tidy a file once. We build the cleanup as a repeatable Power Query step, so next month's export takes one refresh instead of another afternoon.
What the cleanup covers
Typical jobs: duplicate customers under three spellings, dates stored as text, numbers with trailing spaces, one address crammed into a single column, forty monthly files that need to become one table.
We do the first clean by hand where judgement is needed, then encode the rules so the process repeats itself.
Deduplication
Fuzzy matching on names and addresses, with a review list of anything ambiguous before we merge.
Standardisation
Dates, currencies, phone formats, country codes and capitalisation brought to one consistent rule.
Splitting and merging
Full names, addresses and combined fields separated into usable columns.
Consolidation
Many files or many tabs stacked into one table with a source column so nothing loses its origin.
Symptoms of dirty data
- 1Lookups return #N/A for rows that clearly existAlmost always invisible whitespace or a type mismatch.
- 2Your customer count is higher than realityDuplicates under slightly different spellings.
- 3Dates sort in the wrong orderThey are text, not dates. Fixable in one pass.
- 4Pivot tables show blank categoriesInconsistent labels — 'NY', 'N.Y.', 'New York' counted separately.
Everything that ships with this
- A clean, structured table ready for analysis
- A Power Query process you can rerun next month
- An exceptions list of anything we could not resolve automatically
- Documented cleaning rules
- Your raw source data preserved untouched
Fixed price, quoted after we have seen the file or the brief. Nothing is billed until you approve the scope in writing. See pricing.
Comfortably into the millions of rows using Power Query. Beyond that we would usually suggest a database, and we will say so rather than push Excel past its limits.
No. Anything ambiguous goes on an exceptions list for you to decide. Automatic merges are limited to exact and high-confidence matches.
Yes — same process, and we can leave the cleanup running inside Sheets if that is where the data lives.
Often booked alongside this
Send the file. Get a straight answer.
A 20-minute call, or just email the workbook with a note on what is wrong. Either way you will know the cause and the cost before you commit.