CrafterBy vs Spreadsheets
A spreadsheet is where pricing starts — and where it quietly breaks.
Most makers price in a spreadsheet. It is free and flexible, but it does not update itself: when a material price changes, every product that uses it is silently wrong until you fix each formula by hand.
| Feature | CrafterBy | Spreadsheets |
|---|---|---|
| Material library reused across products | ||
| Price change re-costs every dependent product | ||
| Machine time & overhead built in | Manual | |
| Stock, orders & production tracking | ||
| Works on phone, shared with your team | Clunky | |
| Cost | From free | Free |
Spreadsheets: Where it shines
- Free and already on your computer
- Total flexibility for one-off calculations
- No learning curve for basic sums
Spreadsheets: Where it falls short
- A material price change does not propagate to products
- No shared library of materials, machines, or recipes
- Errors hide in formulas and copy-paste
- No stock, orders, or multi-user access
The bottom line
Keep the spreadsheet for scratch math. For pricing you rely on, a living cost model beats formulas you have to babysit.
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