Shear tab design spreadsheet: what a spreadsheet can't show you

If you searched for a shear tab (single-plate connection) design spreadsheet, you are looking for the same thing every connection spreadsheet promises: type in the geometry, get every AISC 360 limit state checked. Spreadsheets are a legitimate way to do that — many excellent ones exist, and this page is not an argument against them. It is about the question any calculation tool, spreadsheet or web app, should be able to answer: how do you know the formulas inside are right?

The verification-provenance problem

A typical spreadsheet — downloaded, inherited from a colleague, or built in-house years ago — usually cannot show you:

• Who checked the formulas, and against what. A cell formula has no citation; an error in a nested IF looks identical to a correct one. Unless a verification record ships with the file, the check is "someone used it before."
• Whether it still matches the current specification. Provisions move between editions (hole sizes, tearout coefficients, net-area rules). A spreadsheet rarely states which edition each formula implements, per clause.
• Whether edits broke it. Spreadsheets invite editing — that is their strength — but every edit silently invalidates whatever checking was done before, with no regression tests to catch it.
• How the eccentric bolt group is actually handled. The ICR coefficient is the hardest part of a shear tab check to implement; a hidden interpolation, or a plain n×(bolt shear) with no eccentricity reduction, looks the same in a results cell.

The alternative shearcheck offers

shearcheck is a free, login-free web calculator for conventional single-plate shear connections per ANSI/AISC 360-22, built so the verification provenance is the product:

• Every limit state matches two independent blind derivations to within 0.001%, and the printed values of AISC Design Example II.A-17A to within 1%, with the same governing limit state at published precision. The complete comparison tables are published, with the full report as a PDF.
• Every limit state on the result page cites its AISC 360-22 clause, and the reference values run as regression tests on every code change — an edit that drifts a number fails the build.
• The output is printable and downloads as an editable .docx calculation document, so it drops into a submittal package the way a spreadsheet printout would.

Run a check or see the demo case — the published AISC Design Example II.A-17A, live. As with any calculation aid (spreadsheets included), the output is not a sealed design: the engineer of record or connection design engineer must review and seal.