When Excel is enough
If you buy from one or two suppliers, they send you one list a month, always in the same format and the same currency, and you are the only one reading it, Excel does the job very well. A tab per supplier, a column per month, a few formulas: it is free, and you already master it.
In that case, keep Excel. Merconto would not save you enough time to be worth its price.
Where Excel gives way
Things change when suppliers multiply, lists arrive every week, and each one writes theirs their own way. The spreadsheet does not break at once: every day it asks for a little more work by hand, and lets through what nobody sees any more.
- Every list has its own layout. With every one that arrives: copy, paste, put the columns back in order.
- References do not match. “JBL GO Essential 2” at one supplier, “GO Essential 2” at the other: the VLOOKUP finds nothing, and nobody notices.
- Currencies and incoterms are handled by hand. A rate updated in one tab and not the other, a FOB price compared with a DDP price.
- History scatters. A file per offer, the comparison redone with every new list, or a list overwritten by the next one.
- Nothing flags supplier errors. One EAN on two products, a missing currency, a price copied from one line to the next go unnoticed.
- WhatsApp messages have no place. Offers sent in a few lines stay in the phone.
- The team works on copies. “prices_final_v3_OK.xlsx” goes round by e-mail, and nobody is sure to have the right version.
Excel's cost shows on no invoice: it is counted in hours of copy-paste, and in gaps nobody sees. Going through three real offers by hand, Merconto's founder found a 45 % gap on the same reference between two suppliers.
Side by side
| Excel | Merconto | |
|---|---|---|
| Reading a new list | copy-paste, columns to put back in order | read as it came: Excel, CSV or pasted message |
| Matching references | VLOOKUP on codes written differently | one key per model, from one supplier to the next |
| Currencies and incoterms | conversions and formulas to maintain | your rates, applied everywhere; the incoterm read in the offer |
| Landed cost | to build, tab by tab | on every line, every step with its origin |
| History | a file per offer, compared by hand | every offer dated, side by side, increases and decreases sorted |
| Supplier errors | nothing flagged | eleven kinds of anomaly looked for, nothing corrected in silence |
| WhatsApp messages | stay in the phone | pasted, read, filed on your click |
| Teamwork | copies going round | one shared workspace, three roles |
| Public price | to look up by hand | read automatically on Pro and Business |
| Cost | already paid with your office suite | from €49.99 a month excl. VAT |
| Flexibility | total: anything is possible, everything is to do | one job only: your supplier offers |
Not one against the other
Merconto does not ask you to leave Excel. It reads your Excel files the way your suppliers send them, and the supplier view exports to Excel. What it replaces is the copy-paste, the VLOOKUP that finds nothing and the comparison redone by hand; not the spreadsheet in which you prepare your customer prices.
Few suppliers, one currency, monthly lists, a single buyer: Excel. Several suppliers, several currencies, offers every week, WhatsApp included, a team: Merconto, next to Excel.
The simplest is still to try it on your own lists: seven days, no card, with the Business features.