Excel in. Database out. Nothing committed until you say so.
Bidirectional Excel ↔ database synchronization for data managers and scientists. Define a template once, run it forever, and review a full row-by-row diff before a single change lands.
Your data lives in a database. Your field teams live in Excel.
Existing tools either demand technical expertise, ask you to abandon your database, or treat Excel as a second-class citizen. None of them solve the round-trip cleanly, and none let you see what will change before a row is committed.
Export by hand
Staff pull data into Excel and reformat it for every use case.
Fill in the field
Teams add records, update values, and correct existing data.
Reconcile manually
Someone merges the returned spreadsheets back: error-prone, slow, unscalable.
The core workflow
How it worksDefine a template
A data manager maps queries to cells and cell ranges to SQL statements in Relay’s declarative language. Defined once, reused indefinitely, versioned automatically.
Generate populated workbooks
Relay runs the template against your database and produces a correctly structured, pre-populated Excel file: multi-sheet, iterative row expansion, formulas preserved.
Preview before you commit
The import runs inside a transaction, captures every row-level change via audit triggers, shows a full diff, then rolls back. Errors point at the exact Excel cell.
Commit with confidence
Once reviewed, the import executes cleanly. Every action logged with user, timestamp, and full change detail.
The preview mechanism
Most import tools give you two options: trust the data and commit, or write custom validation logic. Relay shows you a precise, row-by-row diff of exactly what would happen (every insert, update, and delete, by table and by cell) before anything is written.
What Relay does
Grouped by concernBidirectional round-trip
One template governs export and import.
Declarative mapping language
Parameterized queries, multi-sheet, formula preservation.
No-code day-to-day
Run cycles without SQL or engineering support.
Transactional import preview
See every insert, update, and delete first.
Cell-level error attribution
Errors point at the exact cell, not the row.
Approval workflow
Require a second reviewer before anything commits.
Full audit log
Every export, upload, preview, and commit recorded.
Template versioning
Iterate without breaking live workflows.
Multi-database support
PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server.
Who Relay is for
By situationYou send spreadsheets out and dread getting them back
Country offices, field teams, and enumerators return workbooks that someone has to reconcile by hand.
Someone external dictates the template
A regulator, funder, or legacy protocol hands you the Excel file you must fill from your own database.
A bad import would be a serious problem
Governance rules say no single person should silently change the system of record.
Why not just use an existing tool?
Comparison| Relay | Generic ETL | Low-code platforms | Manual process | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Round-trip Excel workflow | Native | Partial | Rare | Manual |
| Transactional import preview | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Cell-level error attribution | ✓ | — | Rarely | — |
| Non-technical day-to-day use | ✓ | — | Sometimes | — |
| Template versioning | ✓ | Complex | Rarely | — |
| Approval workflow | ✓ | — | Rarely | — |
| On-premises option | ✓ | Sometimes | Rarely | N/A |
| Multi-database support | PG · MySQL · MSSQL | Varies | Varies | N/A |
Managed hosting
No infrastructure to manage. Queries are stored and executed server-side: workbooks never contain embedded SQL or credentials.
On-premises / self-hosted
For strict data governance, compliance, or residency requirements. Runs entirely inside your infrastructure.
Managing relational data through Excel? Let’s talk.
Tell us how your collection or reporting cycle works and we’ll show you the round-trip.