How do you calculate the business case for replacing Excel?

Add up the hours your team spends on work that exists only because your systems are not connected, put a price on those hours, and add the cost of errors. Compare that with the cost of trading software: the subscription, onboarding and your own time to implement it. The result shows whether the switch pays for itself and how long that takes.

Step 1: Measure the hours

Follow a few deals from contract to invoice and note every manual step for two weeks. Typical items:

• Entering contracts and orders in more than one file or system
• Updating the position overview by hand
• Typing invoices in a separate invoicing or accounting package
• Checking and correcting errors before invoices go out
• Collecting figures from several files for the month-end close

Measure instead of estimating. Most teams underestimate this work because it is spread across the day.

Step 2: Put a price on the hours

Multiply the hours by the full cost per hour: salary plus employer costs. An example with illustrative figures, for a team of two traders, one logistics employee and one finance employee:

10 hours × 46 working weeks × €50 per hour = €23,000 per year.

Step 3: Add the cost of errors

Look at the last twelve months: credit notes for wrong invoices, quantities delivered twice or not at all, and deals with a lower margin than expected because a cost was missed. Even a few errors per year can add up to thousands of euros. See Why do dairy traders lose money on deals they thought were profitable?

Step 4: Add up the costs of switching

• The software subscription
• Onboarding and data import
• Your own team’s time for setup and training
• A short period with some double work while you switch

Step 5: Calculate the payback time

Payback time = one-off costs / (annual savings − annual subscription)

What to watch out for

• Only count time that actually goes away. Hours saved are worth money if they are used for other work, such as more deals or better follow-up.
• Don’t count on fewer people. For most small traders, the gain is growth without extra back-office staff, not a smaller team. See How do small dairy trading companies scale without hiring more back-office staff?
• Include what is hard to measure. Less dependence on one person, faster answers to customers and a clearer position are real benefits, even if you leave them out of the sum.

The business case and Moo Software

Moo links contracts, orders, stock and invoices in one online system, so contracts and orders are entered once and invoices are created from orders. The position list updates with every contract, order and stock movement. All functionality is included and pricing is based on usage. For your own business case, ask us for a no-obligation indication of the annual cost.

See it with your own data

Want to fill in the business case with your own figures? Book a demo or contact us.