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Our costing sheets price a job in 8 seconds and caught a margin squeeze

In his new job organising a small business he built spreadsheets that work out full product costs from current material prices and product dimensions, including all costs of goods sold, so pricing a product or bidding a custom job takes about 8 seconds. Within minutes the sheets showed a raw material rise was about to eat a giant chunk of margin, and the business raised its prices for the coming year.

How it works

  1. Build spreadsheets that take material prices and dimensions
  2. They compute full product costs including all costs of goods sold
  3. Pricing and custom bids run in about 8 seconds
  4. The numbers reveal a raw material rise squeezing margin
  5. The business raises next year prices

Why it’s worth knowing

The sheets paid for themselves in minutes: the first thing they caught was a cost rise about to wipe out the margin.

Where it’s from

Summarized from a public post on reddit.com. See the original ↗

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Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.