ConsignKit vs Spreadsheet
Most consignment stores start with a spreadsheet. It's free, it's familiar, and for a handful of consignors it does the job. The question every growing store eventually asks is: when is it worth switching? This is the direct comparison — what a spreadsheet can do, what ConsignKit does differently, and the signs that it's time to move on.
What a spreadsheet handles well
- Recording consignors and their contact details
- Logging items in with prices and dates
- Calculating commissions manually with a formula
- Tracking which items have sold
For a very small operation — under 20 consignors, slow intake — a well-maintained spreadsheet works. The investment is time, not money.
Where the spreadsheet starts to cost you
The problems compound as volume increases:
- Manual sale matching. Every Shopify sale has to be found, identified, matched to a consignor row, and entered — by hand. At 10 sales a week, annoying. At 50, it's a part-time job.
- No Shopify connection. Your spreadsheet has no idea what sold in your store today. That gap requires daily reconciliation.
- Commission errors. A formula that works for a flat 60/40 breaks when one consignor is on 55% and another is on 65% and a sale item was marked down 20%.
- Payout assembly. Producing a statement for each consignor means filtering, copying, formatting — manually, every payout cycle.
- No audit trail. If a consignor disputes a payout, your records may not be detailed enough to resolve it.
What ConsignKit does differently
| Task | Spreadsheet | ConsignKit |
|---|---|---|
| Log a Shopify sale to a consignor | Manual — find, match, enter | Automatic — sale attributed at checkout |
| Commission calculation | Formula (fragile at scale) | Automatic, per-consignor rate |
| Handle a markdown or refund | Manual edit | Adjusts the ledger automatically |
| Generate a payout statement | Filter, copy, format manually | One click, itemised |
| Consignor history | Reconstruct by searching rows | Full per-consignor record |
| Dispute resolution | Dig through the sheet | Full transaction history available |
The honest cost of staying on a spreadsheet
Spreadsheets look free. They're not — you're paying in time. If payout prep takes two hours every fortnight, that's 52 hours a year. If you have one commission dispute per quarter that takes 30 minutes to resolve (and damages your consignor relationship), that's a cost too. Purpose-built software costs money monthly; the spreadsheet costs you in staff time and relationship risk.
The question isn't "can a spreadsheet do this?" — it's "how much time and error-risk am I accepting by making it?"
When to switch
Switch when any of these are true: payout prep takes more than an hour, you've had a commission error you couldn't trace cleanly, you're handling more than 50 active consignors, or you've added online sales and the two-system reconciliation is a weekly headache.