[chollida1]

First off have an upvote for trying to sovle a difficult problem...

> Each report has had and will have bugs. But the number of defects each customer must find and resolve themselves is likely lower than alternative approaches.

Sure, the down side is that the customer loses teh flexibility of a system(excel sheet) tailored to their own needs.

What you've described isn't the difference between excel and your one size fits all software, its the difference between each client writing their own vs buying off the shelf software.

I could replace excel with Oracle DB or custom reporting website or any other piece of software and the statements would still be equally true.

"Custom software provides flexibility over general software, the downside is that bug fixes are shared across general software and not custom built software."