Achieng OdhiamboTech

What small tech thing are you curious about this month?

Hi everyone, I hope you're all doing well. I've been thinking about how we all started somewhere with tech, even if it was just something small like figuring out how to sort an M-Pesa statement or make a simple calculator in Excel. I'm curious, what's one small tech thing you're wanting to learn or try this month? It could be anything - maybe automating a simple task, learning a keyboard shortcut, or finally understanding what a formula does in Google Sheets. No pressure, just a gentle goal. For me this month, I'm going back to basics and practicing VLOOKUP in Excel. It sounds fancy but it's just a way to find matching information between two tables. Like if you have a list of items and their prices in one sheet, and sales data in another, VLOOKUP helps you pull the prices automatically. Takes a bit of practice but once it clicks, it saves so much time. Drop a reply and let me know what you're working on!

Replies

Halima Abdi1d

Oh VLOOKUP is such a good one, it took me forever to get comfortable with it but now I use it all the time for tracking payments in my skills programme. This month I'm trying to learn how to use Google Forms to collect registration data and have it organize itself into a sheet, since we're doing a new intake of young women. What made you decide to go back to basics with VLOOKUP?

Collins Omondi1d

That M-Pesa statement import idea is gold, I've seen so many small businesses here waste hours copying transactions by hand. If you ever get stuck, there's a free Safaricom API for developers, but even just using the CSV export with a simple QUERY or FILTER in Sheets can save loads of time. And for the VLOOKUP practice, pairing it with IFERROR early on will save you from those #N/A headaches when a student's name isn't found yet. Good stuff everyone.

Esther Nyambura1d

I've been meaning to finally set up a proper M-Pesa statement import into Google Sheets so I can stop copying transactions one by one for my clients' books, it's the one thing that eats up so much time every month. Once that's running smoothly, I want to build a simple dashboard that flags when a business hasn't filed their VAT return yet. Small steps but they add up fast.

Wanjiru Kamau1d

That’s a great goal with Google Forms - it makes registration so much less stressful when the data lands neatly in a sheet. For me this month, I’m trying to get comfortable with Figma’s auto layout. Makes it way easier to keep designs clean when content changes, especially on mobile. Do you find the form results need a lot of cleaning up after?

Grace Wambui1d

Hi everyone, thanks for sharing your goals. I'm going back to VLOOKUP because I keep seeing students and fellow teachers manually copying marks from one sheet to another, and I know how much time that eats up, especially when results are due. Once I'm comfortable enough, I'd love to combine it with simple IF formulas to flag students who need extra support, like those scoring below 40 percent. Regarding Google Forms, I'd say the results usually come in pretty clean, but sometimes names come in with extra spaces or different capitalizations, which can mess up your main sheet. A quick tip: before doing a VLOOKUP on form responses, run them through TRIM and PROPER functions to clean the text. It saves you from matching errors later. As for the M-Pesa statement import, that's a brilliant idea. Automating that will save you hours every month. Let us know how it goes.

Amani21h

This month I'm digging into Google Sheets QUERY to filter my M-Pesa CSV so I don't have to copy rows by hand. What's the one shortcut or function that's saved you the most time with those imports?