The best B2B pricing setup for wholesalers: spreadsheet, ERP module or dedicated app
There is no universally correct answer here, which is why the category is confusing. There are three routes, each of which is clearly right for a particular kind of business — and the mistake is picking the one that suits a business twice your size, or half of it.
Route one: the spreadsheet
Good at: being free, being instantly editable, and doing exactly what you want with no learning curve. Nothing beats a spreadsheet for modelling — trying out a price rise, testing a formula, sanity-checking a margin.
Where it breaks: when the spreadsheet is the master record and something else needs the prices. Every export, paste and re-upload is an opportunity for a stale price to reach a customer, and nobody can tell you who changed a cell or when.
Who should pick it: businesses with a small catalogue, one or two price levels, and one person responsible for prices.
Route two: pricing inside your ERP or order system
Good at: being in one place, with no sync to go wrong. If your system already supports the tier structure and the formulas you need, use it and stop reading.
Where it breaks: when the native pricing model is thinner than your commercial reality — one trade price when you need four, no formula support, no bulk editing that a human can actually use. Then you get the worst pattern of all: a spreadsheet that shadows the system, and a monthly argument about which is right.
Who should pick it: anyone whose system genuinely covers their pricing model. Check the current capability in the vendor’s own documentation rather than assuming from memory — these things change release to release.
Route three: a dedicated pricing layer
Good at: unlimited named tiers, formulas from cost or RRP, bulk editing at spreadsheet speed, and writing the result back into the system that fulfils the order so there is still one master record.
Where it breaks: it is another subscription, another login, and another integration that has to keep working. If your pricing is simple, this is overhead for no return.
Who should pick it: wholesalers with several distinct customer classes, thousands of SKUs, or a price-rise process that currently takes days.
The question that decides it
How long does a 4% increase across one tier take you today, and how confident are you that the new prices reach every place a customer might see them? If the answer is “an afternoon, and fairly confident”, stay where you are. If it is “a week, and we always miss some”, you have outgrown route one.
B2B Price Tiers is route three for Linnworks users specifically: named tiers, cost-up or RRP-down formulas, attractive rounding, CSV in and out, and two-way sync that writes prices back as native Linnworks extended properties. Find out more → · The migration plan
Questions, or want a tool we don't have yet? Email hello@grafto.co.uk — a real person replies.