Every place I have ever worked had that same kind of shitty Excel/Access pile of crap including the manual instructions. It's like people can't understand that if you can write down a procedure for someone to follow you can automate that procedure.
Are you a programmer? Have you ever had to support and maintain an 'automated procedure'?
I'd bet a lot of the people you're casually insulting do understand that it could be automated, but, unlike you perhaps, they're more cognizant of the costs of automating it (and ensuring it continues to work).
Processing even slightly messy data can turn out to be a basically unlimited amount of work, easily.
