Building the DORA register by hand in Excel vs using Letzscale

The register is a relational dataset across interlocking templates (on our product pages: 101 fields across templates B_01.01 to B_07.01). Change a provider LEI in one place and three other tables have to agree. Spreadsheets do not enforce that. People do — until February, when they do not.

Letzscale maps your ICT contracts into register fields with a verifiable quote for every value it fills, and flags Missing when the contract does not state the answer. You still export into the spreadsheet or tool you file with. You stop using the spreadsheet as the place where truth is invented.

What by hand in Excel usually means

• Someone builds a workbook that roughly mirrors the ESA templates.
• Procurement, legal and IT paste values from PDFs, email and last year's file.
• In February the workbook is coerced into xBRL-CSV.
• Validation fails on LEIs, coded fields or broken keys.
• The team fixes the file, not the contracts, and hopes the next cycle is quieter.

The ESAs' dry run showed how that ends: fewer than 7% of nearly a thousand participating firms passed all 116 data quality checks. The European Supervisory Authorities have also been clear that Excel templates are a poor foundation for submission-quality registers — converters exist because the spreadsheet is not the filing format.

Side-by-side

When Excel is still the right tool

• You already have evidenced values and only need to inspect a table
• Your adviser or GRC expects a spreadsheet hand-off
• You are diffing two export versions side by side

Letzscale feeds those workflows. It does not ask you to throw Excel away. It asks you to stop hunting 101 columns across master agreements, SLAs and order forms by hand.

When Letzscale is the better starting point

• Mid-sized ManCos, AIFMs, UCITS managers and payment institutions under CSSF or CAA supervision
• Firms whose first filing cycle barely survived a spreadsheet
• Consultancies processing many client portfolios
• Any team that needs proof for what is present and a named chase list for what is not

What Letzscale deliberately is not

• Not a filing tool — it stops at the export file
• Not a GRC replacement — it feeds your platform, spreadsheet or adviser
• Not a chatbot — it answers the regulation's questions against your documents

Try the comparison on one real supplier

Upload one supplier's contracts. Get the ranked gap report and formatted export, free. If our software misses a required field that is clearly stated in your contract, our founders will manually audit your next three suppliers by hand, over the weekend, at no charge.

Then open the export next to your current workbook. The difference is usually not more columns. It is knowing which cells were ever justified by a sentence in the PDF.