Solution to multiple user access for excel

Hello,

I will be working on a project with a tight budget and I am trying to research a solution for two objectives for this project.

1. Being able to share an excel file which can be edited by multiple users. There shouldn't be a cell where more than one person edited the information, but if that occurs I would like this to be outputted so I can identify possible human errors. I don't mind if a possible solution is each person gets there individual copy but the information can be merged together automatically into a master file easily at the end of the day.

2. Being able to track how many cells or rows were edited by each unique individual who worked on the project, at the end of the day. Also it would be nice, but not necessary, to gather other tracking information for project management.

The solution doesn't have to be absolutely free, but like I said, I'm on a tight budget and free or little amount of cost would be optimal.

Thank you guys so much for your input!

I guess it depends on how fine-grained you want stuff to be?

You can implement the Track Changes features inside the spreadsheet(s) as part of each file. That might be all you need for change tracking?

But if you've got more than about four-five people involved, you probably need to go for a full-blown Version Control System.

There are several of those that are released under an open license (eg, free for personal & commercial use); Gnu Bazaar, SVN / Apache Subversion, Git, Veracity, etc.