Comparison
GemQuote vs Spreadsheet for Jewelry Quoting
Spreadsheets are where most jewellers start. They are free, flexible and familiar. They also break down in specific, predictable ways as your volume increases and your pricing gets more complex.
Where spreadsheets work fine
If you are quoting 2–3 pieces per month, a spreadsheet probably does the job. You can hardcode a gold rate, enter a weight and get to a number quickly. For simple pieces where the client is in the room and wants a rough estimate, a spreadsheet is not the bottleneck.
The problems emerge when volume increases, when clients want a professional document rather than a screen share, when gold moves daily and your spreadsheet has last month's rate, or when you want to look up a client's history and cannot find the right file.
Where spreadsheets break down
Gold price is always wrong
Spot price changes daily. A spreadsheet has whatever rate you last typed in. A jeweller quoting 5 pieces a week with a stale gold rate is systematically under- or over-quoting on materials without knowing it.
No professional output
A screenshot of a spreadsheet is not a quote. Formatting a PDF from a spreadsheet is a separate 10–20 minute task every time, and the result often looks amateurish compared to a purpose-built document.
No client tracking
Finding a quote from three months ago requires knowing the filename, folder, or client name and hoping you named it consistently. There is no customer history, no quote status, no follow-up tracking.
Single-user and fragile
Spreadsheet files get lost, overwritten, saved in the wrong version or corrupted. There is no audit trail, no version history, no guarantee the file your apprentice is using is the same one you set up.
Feature comparison
| Feature | Spreadsheet | GemQuote |
|---|---|---|
| Live gold and silver spot prices | ||
| Diamond cost auto-fill from your price table | ||
| AI quote from plain English description | ||
| Branded PDF in one click | ||
| Client approval link (accept / decline online) | ||
| Work order from accepted quote | ||
| Quote expiry and follow-up reminders | ||
| Customer history and CRM | ||
| Quote revision history | ||
| Duplicate and revise in seconds | Manual copy | |
| Correct karat purity calculation | If set up correctly | |
| Custom margin and tax settings | Manual | |
| Works on mobile | Poorly |
Who should switch
If you are completing more than 5 custom jobs per month, spending time formatting PDFs, manually looking up gold prices, or losing track of where a quote stands — the time cost of the spreadsheet has already exceeded the cost of purpose-built software.
GemQuote is $197/month. If switching saves you 55 minutes per quote across 10 jobs a month, that is over 9 hours recovered at whatever you value your time at. For most jewellers, that math resolves in the first week.
Ready to replace the spreadsheet?
Live gold prices, diamond costs, branded PDFs and instant work orders. First quote in under 5 minutes.
Get started with GemQuote