Pricing software calculates the selling price of every product from its real cost — with tax, freight, commission and discounts built into the math — and shows the margin before the price reaches the store.
This page explains what the category solves, what changes compared with a spreadsheet, and which criteria to evaluate before hiring any vendor — us included.
It is the system that decides, product by product, which price the company will charge — and shows the margin each price leaves before it takes effect.
It reads each item's cost from the ERP, applies the taxes of the operation, adds the expenses the sale carries and arrives at the price that meets the margin rule the company has set. When the cost changes, the suggested price changes with it — without anyone reopening a file.
What differs from one vendor to another is not the promise — they all say they calculate prices. What differs is what goes into the calculation, and that list decides whether the number on the screen has anything to do with the margin the company will actually report at the end of the month.
Yes. Pricing system and pricing software name the same tool: manufacturing and distribution tend to say system, while retail searches for software. This page applies to anyone who typed either one.
Five problems that show up in every operation that sets prices by hand, in the order in which they cost money.
The spreadsheet holds the cost typed in the last time someone remembered to update it. The real cost changes with every purchase: freight, ICMS-ST, bonuses, trade discounts and returns all hit the invoice and change what the product really cost. A price built on an old cost becomes a margin that only shows up wrong at month-end close.
The company's tax regime, the item's NCM code, the operation's CFOP, tax substitution and the state's MVA all change how much is left from each sale. Pricing software calculates this item by item; the spreadsheet uses an average rate that matches no invoice at all.
When the margin is calculated in next month's report, the wrong price has already been selling for thirty days. Software reverses the order: it shows each item's margin before the price goes to the store, and blocks anything that breaks the floor.
Without a written rule, discounting turns into case-by-case negotiation, and the margin on a sale depends on who handled it. With margin rules by family, channel and turnover class, the discount limit lives in the system, not in the salesperson's memory.
A new supplier price list changes the cost of hundreds of items at once. Passing that on by hand takes days, and whatever was left behind keeps selling at the old margin until someone notices. Bulk repricing is the job a spreadsheet cannot do at scale.
A spreadsheet does not fail because it is a spreadsheet. It fails because costs go stale, because tax enters as an average, and because nobody reviews ten thousand rows every week.
| What is compared | In a spreadsheet | In software |
|---|---|---|
| Source of cost | Typed by hand, as of whenever someone last updated it. | Read from the ERP with every incoming invoice, freight and taxes included. |
| Taxes | One average rate, the same for the entire catalog. | Calculated by item, by operation and by state. |
| Scale | Works well up to a few hundred items. | The same effort for ten or for a hundred thousand items. |
| Simulation | Copy the tab, tweak it and compare in your head. | Scenarios compared side by side before anything is applied. |
| Errors | Silent: a broken formula returns a number all the same. | Blocked by the rule, with the reason written on screen. |
| History | The version of whoever saved last. | Who changed the price, when, from what to what, and why. |
| Who changes the price | Whoever has the file open. | Whoever has authority over that product group. |
Changing tools, though, is a decision about the size of the operation, not about a feature list. If that is your question, the comparison by measured criteria and the tipping point say at how many items, states and people a spreadsheet stops being enough.
Six criteria that separate pricing software from a spreadsheet sold as software. They are worth bringing to the first conversation with any vendor.
Reading cost, product master data and sales from the ERP is half the way; sending the approved price back is the other half. Ask how the integration works — API, certified connector or file — how often it runs, and what happens when the ERP changes version.
ICMS and ICMS-ST with the MVA per state, PIS and COFINS under the company's regime, IPI where applicable, NCM and CFOP read from the product master. A vendor that treats tax as a single percentage is handing the calculation back to the spreadsheet.
Margin by family, turnover class, channel and store; different floors, ceilings and markups for the traffic-driving item and the long-tail item. A rule exists to be applied on its own across thousands of items — if every exception needs a person, it is not a rule.
Seeing a scenario's effect on margin, revenue and position against competitors before applying it. It is what separates deciding a price from finding out its result the following month.
Authority per user and per product group, recorded approvals and a history of what changed. Price is a money decision: when nobody knows who lowered the margin, fixing it becomes an argument instead of an adjustment.
A rollout that takes a quarter before producing its first price costs more than the subscription. Ask in how many weeks the first product group goes live and what has to be ready on the ERP side.
The seventh criterion does not fit in a demo: who already uses the software and what it changed in their margin. The results Revema measures in retail and distribution operations and the use cases by segment are the kind of evidence worth asking any vendor on the list for.
The eighth is your sector. There is a page for each one, with the problem, the numbers and the vocabulary of the people who operate there: pricing for retail, pricing for distributors and pricing for manufacturing.
The ninth is the input that lives in none of the company's systems: the price competitors are charging. Collecting it on a regular cadence is a separate job, and it is what competitor price monitoring covers — it feeds the margin rule instead of replacing it.
RevPrice is the pricing software from Revema Tech, built for Brazilian retail and distribution. It imports the cost from the ERP with the taxes on the invoice, calculates the markup per product using the company's margin rules, simulates the scenario before applying it and records who approved each price.
It is the same list of criteria as in the previous section — and the advice holds with any vendor: ask to see the calculation of an item with tax substitution and a bulk repricing simulation before you decide.
The questions that come up before the first conversation with a vendor.
None. Both names describe the same category: the tool that calculates the selling price from the real cost, the taxes and the company's margin rules. Pricing system is how manufacturing and distribution tend to put it; pricing software is how retail searches for it.
No. It reads cost, product master data and sales from the ERP, calculates the price with the company's rules and sends the approved price back for the ERP to publish. The ERP is still what issues invoices, controls inventory and closes the cash register.
It is the most common case. A spreadsheet does not fail because it is a spreadsheet: it fails because cost goes stale between updates, because tax enters as an average, and because nobody reviews ten thousand rows with every new supplier price list. Software solves all three, and the migration usually starts with the product group that weighs most on margin.
It is the criterion that separates vendors the most. The calculation has to read NCM, CFOP and tax regime from the product master and apply ICMS, ICMS-ST with the destination state's MVA, PIS, COFINS and IPI where applicable. Ask how the software handles tax substitution and interstate sales before you look at any screen.
It depends on the ERP delivering clean cost and product data, not on the software. With the integration ready and clean master data, the first product group usually goes out within weeks; with incomplete data, cleaning it becomes the first stage of the project.
The model is a subscription, and the price follows the size of the operation: number of items, stores and ERP integrations. There is no published list price because the rollout depends on the source ERP and the state of the product data — the quote comes after looking at both.
The blog covers the same subjects in detail: how to calculate markup, how to read the right cost and what makes margin slip away without anyone noticing.
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