Spreadsheet vs pricing software: five signs you have outgrown the spreadsheet (and three that you have not)
Spreadsheets get an unfair kicking in software marketing. They are a genuinely excellent tool that a great many wholesalers should keep using. The useful exercise is not “spreadsheets bad” — it is knowing the specific signals that mean yours has stopped paying its way.
Five signs you have outgrown it
1. Somebody has to re-key prices into another system. The moment the spreadsheet is not the system that takes orders, you have two masters and a gap between them. Every gap eventually reaches a customer as a wrong price.
2. Nobody can tell you who changed a price, or when. If a customer queries a price from three months ago and the answer requires archaeology in a folder of dated copies, that is a control problem, not a filing problem.
3. A price rise takes more than a day. Not the decision — the mechanics. If applying an agreed increase across tiers is a multi-day job, you will put price rises off, which costs more than any subscription.
4. There are more than about three versions in circulation. Sales has one, the counter has one, accounts has one, and a customer is holding a fourth you sent in March.
5. The file has a formula nobody dares touch. Usually written by someone who has left. This is the clearest signal of all.
Three signs you have not
1. One person owns prices and always has. Single ownership removes most of what goes wrong with spreadsheets.
2. Your catalogue is small and stable. A few hundred SKUs with occasional changes does not need an engine.
3. You have one trade price, not several. Tier machinery solves a problem you do not have.
If you are in this group, the better investment is discipline — one master file, version control, a documented process — not a purchase.
The middle path people forget
You do not have to give up the spreadsheet to stop it being the master. Good pricing tools import and export CSV precisely because modelling in a spreadsheet is pleasant and being a system of record is not. Model the price rise in Excel, import it, let the system hold it and distribute it. That keeps the bit you like and removes the bit that hurts. See managing price lists by CSV without descending into chaos.
How to cost the decision honestly
Put a number on the three things a spreadsheet actually costs you: hours per price rise, hours per month reconciling versions, and the annual value of prices that went out wrong. Compare it to a year of subscription. If the subscription wins comfortably, move; if it is close, do not — close means the pain is not yet real. What manual trade pricing really costs works through that arithmetic.
If you conclude it is time, B2B Price Tiers is built for Linnworks sellers making exactly this move, and takes CSV in both directions so the spreadsheet stays in your life as a modelling tool. Find out more →
Questions, or want a tool we don't have yet? Email hello@grafto.co.uk — a real person replies.