There is no table, and there is no way to make one up
Every pricing system proposal comes with a different price tag. One quote is R$800 per month, another is R$3,500, and a third requires an annual contract with implementation charged separately. When comparing these three proposals side by side, people often draw the wrong conclusion: that the cheapest vendor is the most honest, or that the most expensive one is pushing features no one asked for.
Neither interpretation is usually accurate. The reason there is no published price list for this type of system is not a lack of transparency—the price depends on the buyer's operational variables, not on a standard plan designed for any catalog. This article does not make up a price that REVEMA does not charge. Instead, it breaks down the quote: what drives the price up, what is often left out without being clearly disclosed, and how to assess two quotes with different figures without comparing apples and oranges.
The final step is to look at the other side of the equation, which rarely makes it into the decision spreadsheet: the cost of continuing to price the way you do today.
What Makes the Monthly Fee Go Up or Down
Four variables have a greater impact than any others on the cost of a pricing system. They are rarely presented together and clearly in the proposal, so you need to ask about each one.
Catalog size
Most vendors charge based on the number of active SKUs. A distributor with 40,000 items pays more than a neighborhood store with 3,000, even under the same plan. Make sure your contracted tier covers your actual catalog, including inactive items that still require seasonal price adjustments—an undersized plan can lead to extra charges midway through the contract.
Number of users with access
Buyer, category manager, executive: each role typically counts as a separate seat. The monthly cost difference between a 3-user plan and a 10-user plan is far greater than the difference in features between them—because the vendor is charging based on how many people make pricing decisions under that contract, not for the functionality itself.
How many stores, legal entities, or channels the system needs to cover
A retail chain with different prices for each store, or a manufacturer with price lists by sales channel, requires a rules layer that a single-store operation does not need to pay for. This is where quotes vary most between vendors: some charge per business unit, while others charge based on total processing volume. Depending on how the company is structured, the difference between these two models can determine which quote is more affordable.
Integration with your existing ERP
Reading cost, product records, and sales data from the ERP is half the job; sending the approved price back is the other half. An off-the-shelf integration with the ERP the company already uses is priced differently from a custom integration—and the size of that difference usually only comes up in the second meeting, once the vendor knows which system it needs to connect to.
What Is Usually Left Out of the Initial Proposal
A thorough market analysis doesn’t just compare monthly fees—it compares the total cost for the first year, because that’s where the difference between seemingly similar proposals becomes clear.
- Implementation. Charged separately in most contracts, with prices varying widely between vendors. Ask whether the fee is fixed or varies based on the volume of data migrated.
- Team training. Sometimes included, sometimes charged per group or by the hour. Without training, the system ends up underused—the team goes back to spreadsheets as soon as the rules get a little more complex.
- After-hours support. Relevant for teams that adjust prices overnight, before the store opens the next day. Not every proposal includes this level of support in the standard plan.
- Annual price adjustments and contract terms. A 12- or 24-month contract often comes with a discounted monthly fee and an early termination penalty. Ask which adjustment index applies, not just the first-year price.
- Simulation or reprocessing limits. Some plans charge for each full catalog recalculation. A company that adjusts prices every week will quickly reach this limit.
Taken together, these items can add up to more than twice the monthly fee quoted during the initial sales conversation.
How to Compare Two Proposals with Different Figures
The most common mistake is comparing monthly fees alone. A more reliable approach is to create a simple table with the same five items for each proposal: monthly fee, implementation, training, included usage limit, and early termination fee. Divide the first-year total by the number of months—that is the figure you should actually compare.
Here’s an example using illustrative figures, just to show how the method works: Proposal A costs R$1,200 per month, with a R$4,000 implementation fee and training included. Proposal B costs R$900 per month, with a R$9,000 implementation fee and a separate training fee of R$1,500. In the first year, Proposal A totals R$18,400 (12 × 1,200 + 4,000), while Proposal B totals R$21,300 (12 × 900 + 9,000 + 1,500). The proposal with the lower monthly fee ends up costing more in the first year—the opposite of what it might seem at first glance.
Also ask for the second-year cost, excluding the one-time implementation and training fees. This figure reveals the system's "true" monthly cost and should carry more weight in the long-term decision.
The Other Side of the Equation: The Cost of Doing Nothing
The question missing from most purchasing meetings is not “how much does the system cost?” but “how much does it cost to go without it?” A 2023 FIPECAFI master’s study conducted by Edson Clementino da Silva with 70 small-business managers tested exactly that. Participants were divided into three groups, each given progressively more information to price the same product. Only the group with access to a calculation and simulation spreadsheet—not just cost figures, but a tool to process them—came close to the technically correct price, averaging R$266.22 versus the correct price of R$263.29, with a standard deviation of R$3.93. The other two groups made larger and more widely dispersed errors, despite seeing the same cost data.
The study’s conclusion is straightforward: simply seeing the cost does not lead to better pricing decisions. What does help is having a method to calculate and simulate it before setting the price. This applies whether you use a spreadsheet or a software system—the difference is that manual spreadsheets struggle once you have more than a few dozen items, when margin variations by product and customer can no longer be handled by a single formula.
The cost of continuing without this method does not appear on any invoice, but it does show up in your results: prices adjusted too late, margins that fail to reflect differences between products, and pricing decisions concentrated in the hands of one person who does not have time to review the entire catalog every week. Comparing two software proposals is part of the calculation. The other part is measuring how much the catalog loses while the purchasing decision drags on. For a complete step-by-step guide to building this calculation from scratch, see how to price retail products. If you have already decided that spreadsheets have reached their limit and want to understand the category before speaking with a vendor, start with what pricing software is and how to choose one.
