LivingRoom and a spreadsheet
If you keep your costs, stock and profit in a spreadsheet - Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets or another - this page is for you: what a spreadsheet does well, where it takes more and more work as the business grows, and what LivingRoom does instead.
What a spreadsheet does well
- It is cheap or free, and you may have one already.
- Any layout, any column, any formula: it fits the way you think about your business.
- Many people already know how to use one, and a file is easy to send to a bookkeeper or a partner.
- With a few products, one supplier and a modest number of orders, it can be all you need.
Where it takes more work
- Getting the figures in. Orders, fees, refunds and deliveries are typed in or pasted from the reports your marketplaces produce, and a change in a report's layout can mean reworking your formulas.
- Landed cost per unit. Spreading an order's shipping, duty and fees, a prep center's invoice and its tax, and any vendor credit over the right units takes a formula for each order - and it changes when a delivery arrives short.
- Which batch a sale used. When you buy the same product at different prices, costing each sale first in first out means keeping track of every batch and what is left of it.
- Fees from settlement reports. A settlement report has several rows for each order; matching each fee and refund to the right order line by hand is slow work.
- Several people. When several people work in the same file, one person's change can overwrite another's, and a formula copied one row short is easy to miss.
- Checks and history. A spreadsheet accepts what is typed. Catching an order entered twice, or stock that goes below zero, takes checks you build yourself, and a version history (where your spreadsheet has one) shows what changed, not why.
- Backups. The file is as safe as the place you keep it.
What LivingRoom does instead
| The job | In LivingRoom |
|---|---|
| Getting the figures in | Imports Walmart's sales and settlement reports, or pulls them with the Walmart API, with a preview before anything is saved; overlapping files never import an order line twice. Amazon, eBay, Etsy and Shopify report files have their own imports Beta. Column mapping and import templates handle files whose columns differ. |
| Landed cost per unit | Worked out for every purchase order line: the vendor's price, the line's share of the order's costs and credits, and the prep center's fees and their tax. When a line is closed short, the missing units' share is spread over the units that arrived. |
| Which batch a sale used | Every receipt is a batch with its own cost, and its lot and expiry date if you track them. Each sale takes its units first in first out, or earliest expiry first, and keeps the cost of the batch it came from. |
| Fees from settlement reports | Each fee and refund is charged to the order line it belongs to; storage fees and other charges that belong to no order count in their own period. Rows whose orders arrive later are matched then. |
| Several people | Each person signs in with their own user and role - Admin, Manager, Purchaser, Receiving or Reports Only. With an office server, several PCs work on the same data at the same time. |
| Checks and history | Every import shows a preview first: orders already imported are skipped, and stock shortages are shown before anything is saved. The Activity Log shows who did what; a purchase order's history keeps every change with its reason; a closed month refuses changes. |
| Backups | An automatic, encrypted backup every day while the app runs and before every update, and an optional off-site copy to a OneDrive or Dropbox folder or a USB drive. |
Moving from a spreadsheet
- Upload your products from a spreadsheet (.xlsx or .csv); nothing is saved until you have reviewed every row.
- Import purchase orders in bulk from the app's template, or load past purchases from a purchase-history spreadsheet.
- Import your customers from a CSV file.
- Keep using a spreadsheet for what it does well: every report exports to CSV.
In the manual: uploading products, importing purchase orders, exporting reports.
When a spreadsheet may be all you need
- You have a few products, one supplier and not many orders a month.
- You do not use a prep center or Walmart Fulfillment Services and do not need each unit's landed cost.
- You do not use Windows: LivingRoom runs on Windows 11, 64-bit.
- You need a one-off analysis no app offers - export the report to CSV and do it there.
Also: LivingRoom and a hosted profit tracker.
Product features change - check each product's own site; this page was written on October 27, 2026 from public information.
Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets are trademarks of their owners. LivingRoom is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by them.