The spreadsheet is free, and that is the only honest thing anyone can say in its favour. Everything after the licence cost runs the other way, and the 2025 Paris MoU Annual Report shows why with unusual clarity. Authorities conducted 16,474 inspections that year, found deficiencies in 9,879 of them — just under 60 percent — and recorded 51,797 deficiencies in total. Of those, 4,744 were detainable, and they produced 688 detentions. Divide one by the other and you get roughly seven detainable findings per detained ship, which tells you something important: a detention is almost never one catastrophic fault. It is an accumulation of small, individually survivable items across unrelated areas until a Port State Control officer draws the only conclusion left available, which is that the safety management system is not being implemented. That conclusion is detainable in itself, ISM-related deficiencies accounted for 4.5 percent of everything recorded, and the Paris MoU detention rate rose to 4.18 percent, well above historical averages. Spreadsheets do not cause detentions. They just make the accumulation invisible until somebody else counts it for you. Start a free trial of Marine Inspection and see what the same fleet looks like when the count is yours.
What the spreadsheet costs
Nothing
No licence, no subscription, no implementation, no vendor. Already installed, already understood, already in use on 82 percent of fleets by some estimates.
What it costs the first time it fails
Delay from 24 hours to several weeks where a part must be shipped in or a class survey arranged
Port charges, overtime, express freight, attending service engineers, demurrage
Charter party breach, penalties and a lost berth window, usually the heaviest single item
A detention entered on the ship's 36-month history and the ISM company's performance record, affecting every vessel under that management
How a Detention Actually Happens
Understanding the mechanism matters more than any feature comparison, because the mechanism is what a tracking system either interrupts or does not. Roughly seven detainable findings per detention is not a coincidence. It is the shape of the failure. Book a Marine Inspection demo to see where each link below gets broken.
1
Small items go unrecorded, not undone
A fire door closer is stiff. A lube oil analysis is late. An emergency light is out. Each is fixed or noted somewhere, but not in a system that counts them. Fire doors alone accounted for 3.1 percent of all deficiencies recorded by the Paris MoU in 2025.
2
Findings spread across unrelated areas
Fire safety under SOLAS Chapter II-2 made up 16.8 percent of deficiencies, structural and electrical items under Chapter II-1 another 11.6 percent, and crew welfare under MLC Title IV a further 10 percent. Nobody owns the total, because the total lives in four different files.
3
The inspector moves from documents to function
The officer stops reading procedures and starts watching the crew perform them: emergency generator start, emergency fire pump, ventilation flap closure, a boat lowered. DNV reported that detainable deficiencies in the first quarter of 2026 continued to be dominated by shortcomings in ISM implementation, with maintenance of ship and equipment among the most cited sub-categories.
4
The pattern becomes the finding
An accumulation of individually minor items across unrelated areas produces one conclusion — the safety management system is not working — and that conclusion is detainable on its own. Nothing on board broke that day. The record simply never showed anyone what was building.
Seven Ways a Spreadsheet Loses the Thread
These are structural rather than accidental. No amount of discipline removes them, because they are properties of the tool, not of the person using it. Sign up for Marine Inspection and check how many describe your own tracking today.
01
Nothing Tells You a Date Has Passed
A cell containing an expiry date is inert. It does not escalate, it does not notify anyone, and it looks exactly the same the day before it lapses as the day after. Detection depends entirely on somebody opening the right file and reading the right row.
02
Offline Copies Diverge Silently
A vessel copy and a shore copy separate the moment connectivity drops, and both keep being edited. When they meet again there is no merge and no conflict warning, only two versions of the truth and a judgement call about which one to keep.
03
There Is No Audit Trail
Class assesses whether adequate maintenance was carried out at the right interval by competent people with the right parts, and whether the condition found was recorded. A cell shows a value. It does not show who entered it, when, or whether they were the person who did the work.
04
Evidence Cannot Live in a Cell
Photographs, measured values against acceptance criteria and completion notes end up in an email thread, a phone gallery or a separate folder. At the moment an inspector asks, the evidence exists but cannot be produced, which is functionally the same as not existing.
05
One Person Becomes the System
Every fleet spreadsheet has an author who knows why column M is coloured amber. When that person is on leave, mid-rotation or has moved on, the workbook keeps opening and stops meaning anything. The capability was never in the file.
06
Nobody Can See the Total
This is the one that connects directly to the detention pattern. Open findings sit in a QHSE file, overdue jobs in a maintenance file, certificates in a third and crew certification in a fourth. The accumulation that produces an ISM conclusion is spread across files that are never summed.
07
Entry Happens Away From the Work
A laptop is not carried into a machinery space at the end of a watch, so completion is typed up afterwards from memory or a notebook. The record becomes a reconstruction, and every report, trend and decision built on it inherits that gap without anyone noticing.
Net
All Seven Share One Consequence
The fleet's actual compliance position is knowable but not known. Somebody eventually assembles it — and if that somebody is a Port State Control officer rather than you, the assembly happens at the worst possible moment and in front of a charterer.
The Honest Cost Comparison
Set against a purpose-built platform, the spreadsheet wins exactly one line and loses the rest. The right way to read this table is to price your own exposure rather than compare subscription figures. Schedule a walkthrough and work through it with your own last twelve months in front of you.
Table 1: Spreadsheet Tracking Compared With a Marine Inspection Platform
| Cost or Capability Line | Spreadsheet | Purpose-Built Platform | How to Price It for Your Fleet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Software cost | Effectively zero, already licensed | Published per-vessel or per-user subscription | The only line the spreadsheet wins. Take the annual figure and hold it against every row below |
| Expiry detection | Manual, dependent on someone opening the file | Automatic escalation as certificate and survey windows approach | Count near-misses in the last year where a date was caught late |
| Fleet-wide position | Spread across separate files by function and vessel | One dashboard showing overdue counts, open findings and backlog by vessel | Time how long it takes to answer "what is open across the fleet right now" |
| Offline working | Diverging copies with no merge and no conflict warning | Create, edit and submit offline on the device, syncing on reconnection | Count hours spent reconciling vessel and shore versions per month |
| Audit trail | None; a value with no author, timestamp or competence attribution | Every entry attributed, timestamped and traceable to the person and the job | Ask what you would produce if a surveyor questioned one completion |
| Evidence capture | Photographs and readings held outside the record | Photo evidence and measured values attached to the job that generated them | Try retrieving evidence for a job closed six months ago, unaided |
| Key person risk | Concentrated in whoever built and maintains the workbook | Structure holds independently of any individual | Ask what happens to visibility during that person's next leave rotation |
| Detention exposure | Accumulation invisible until an inspector counts it | Accumulation visible continuously, so it gets closed before it converges | Price one detention: delay, direct costs, charter penalties, risk profile |
| Risk profile effect | Deficiency history builds unmanaged into the ship risk profile | Deficiency trends visible and actionable before the next inspection window | Check your current Ship Risk Profile before entering a new region, not after |
2026 COMPLIANCE REALITY
Detention rates are not returning to pre-pandemic levels. The Paris MoU recorded a 4.18 percent detention rate across 16,474 inspections in 2025, with 688 detentions and 19 refusals of access, and its own report notes the rise cannot be attributed to any single convention or inspection area — it reads as a broader operational compliance problem. ISM implementation is the dominant detention driver. DNV recorded 64 detentions of its classed vessels in the first quarter of 2026 against 52 in the same period a year earlier, with detainable findings dominated by ISM shortcomings and maintenance of ship and equipment. Campaign periods raise the stakes. Paris and Tokyo MoUs run a joint Concentrated Inspection Campaign each autumn, and the 2026 campaign runs from 1 September to 30 November focused on cargo securing, so every vessel in a trading fleet should be prepared against that questionnaire specifically. Nothing here is a substitute for the obligation itself. ISM Code Element 10 requires every company holding a Document of Compliance to run a documented maintenance system, and SOLAS Chapter IX makes ISM mandatory for SOLAS-certified ships.
4.18%
That Is the Paris MoU Detention Rate, and It Is Rising
Certificate windows, class survey dates, open findings, overdue jobs and defect status in one place, with automatic escalation before a date passes and photo evidence attached to every completion. Deployed in weeks, priced per vessel, and usable by a crew member on the device already in their pocket.
Where Spreadsheets Are Genuinely Fine
A page arguing that Excel is always wrong would be easy to write and easy to ignore. It is a superb tool inside its actual competence, and knowing the boundary is more useful than being told to abandon it. Start a free trial and keep the spreadsheet for everything in the left column.
Keep the Spreadsheet
One-off analysis where the question will not be asked again next month
Budget modelling and scenario comparison for a docking or a purchase decision
Ad-hoc calculation an engineer needs once, at speed, with no structure required
Exporting from a platform to slice data a particular way for a board pack
Any single-user task with no compliance consequence and no second reader
Move It Off the Spreadsheet
Anything with an expiry date that carries a consequence when it passes
Anything a second person must read, act on, or be accountable for
Anything a surveyor, PSC officer or vetting inspector may ask to see
Anything recorded on a vessel and needed on shore, or the reverse
Anything where the accumulated total matters more than each individual row
What Leaving Excel Actually Involves
The fear is usually that migration is a project. For a fleet coming off spreadsheets it is generally the easiest starting position there is, because there is no legacy system to decommission and no vendor contract to exit. Book a walkthrough and bring one vessel's workbook to the call.
Table 2: Moving From Spreadsheets to a Platform
| Stage | What Happens | Typical Effort | The Thing That Slows It Down |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audit | List every workbook currently holding compliance-relevant data, and who owns each one | A few days, mostly asking people | Discovering files nobody knew existed, which is normal and worth the surprise |
| Standardise naming | Agree one name per component across the fleet before importing anything | The single largest task in the whole exercise | The same bearing carrying a different name on every vessel |
| Import hierarchy | Equipment registers and job cards loaded into a structured hierarchy | Days rather than weeks with reasonably consistent records | Free-text job descriptions with no acceptance criteria attached |
| Opening positions | Current certificate dates, survey windows, open findings and stock counted in | One physical stock count per vessel | Stock figures nobody has verified against a shelf in years |
| Single-vessel pilot | One vessel runs a full cycle on the platform while spreadsheets continue in parallel | Two to three weeks | Choosing your best vessel instead of your most difficult one |
| Crew training | Role-based onboarding delivered during cutover rather than after it | Hours, not days, on a mobile-first platform | Training people who are already behind on work orders |
| Fleet rollout | Vessel by vessel, then a firm read-only date on the old workbooks | Six to ten weeks total for five to eight vessels | Leaving the spreadsheets editable, which keeps half the crew on them |
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a spreadsheet satisfy ISM Code requirements?
Not reliably, and the reason is evidential rather than technical. ISM Code Element 10 requires a documented maintenance system, and what class societies and PSC officers assess is whether adequate maintenance was carried out at the right interval by competent people with the right parts, and whether the condition found was recorded. A spreadsheet can hold intervals and dates. What it cannot hold is attribution, timestamping, measured values against acceptance criteria, or photographic evidence tied to the job. When an inspector moves from reading procedures to verifying that the system is implemented in practice, those are precisely the things being looked for.
What does a detention actually cost?
It arrives in four layers. Immediate delay ranges from 24 hours to several weeks where a part must be shipped in or a class survey arranged. Direct costs cover extra port charges, crew overtime, express freight, attending service engineers and demurrage. Commercial costs — charter party breach, penalties and a lost berth window — are almost always the heaviest single item. Then the detention enters the ship's 36-month history and the managing company's performance record, raising the risk profile of every vessel under that management and increasing future inspection frequency. Repeated detentions can lead to refusal of access, of which the Paris MoU recorded 19 in 2025.
Our fleet has never been detained. Why change anything?
Because the pattern in the data suggests detention is a threshold event rather than a coin flip. The Paris MoU recorded 4,744 detainable deficiencies producing 688 detentions in 2025, roughly seven per detained ship, and its report describes detentions as arising from accumulation across unrelated areas rather than one fault. That means most fleets carrying the same underlying condition simply have not converged yet. Nearly 60 percent of inspections in 2025 found deficiencies of some kind. The relevant question is not whether you have been detained, but whether you could produce your fleet's open-finding total right now without opening four files.
Can we not just build a better spreadsheet?
You can improve it considerably, and several of the seven failure modes above are genuinely reducible with conditional formatting, shared workbooks and discipline. Four are not, because they are properties of the format. A cell cannot escalate when a date passes, cannot record who entered a value or whether they performed the work, cannot hold photographic evidence against a job, and cannot be completed offline at the machine on a device a crew member carries. Those four are exactly the capabilities an inspector tests when moving from documentary to functional verification, which is why effort spent perfecting the workbook tends to improve the least consequential half.
How long does it take to move a small fleet off spreadsheets?
Around six to ten weeks for five to eight vessels, and coming off spreadsheets is the easiest starting position because there is no legacy platform to decommission and no contract to exit. The work concentrates in two places. First, standardising component naming across vessels before importing anything, which is almost always the largest single task. Second, an opening physical stock count per vessel, since existing figures are rarely verified. Pilot on your most difficult vessel rather than your best one, train crews during cutover rather than after, and set a firm read-only date on the old workbooks, because editable spreadsheets keep part of the crew on them indefinitely.
Someone Is Going to Total It Up
The only question is whether that happens on your dashboard on a Tuesday, or on a Port State Control officer's clipboard with a charterer waiting for the berth. Marine Inspection keeps certificate windows, survey dates, open findings and overdue jobs in one continuously visible position — with offline capture, photo evidence and a full audit trail behind every completion.
