Cost Drift & Repricing Tracker Spreadsheet
This spreadsheet shows how far behind your costs each price has fallen since the day you set it, and what closing that gap is worth over a year.
A price is a decision you made on a particular day, using the costs you had in front of you that day, and the costs kept moving while the price did not. Nothing announces it and nothing appears in the accounts, so the margin you think you are making is the one you had when you last did the sum.
What is in it
- Lines — 80 rows, one per thing you sell.
- Changes — 400 rows, one per time a cost moved.
- What To Reprice — every line ranked by what its gap is worth over a year, with a running total down the side.
- By What Changed — which cost actually drove the drift: packaging, ingredients, labour, energy, freight or whatever you name.
- Overview — the whole list on one screen.
- Start Here and Setup, which is three numbers and none of them is difficult.
Who it is for
Anyone who sets a price and then leaves it alone. It is not only for products: day rates, service plans, retainers, hourly rates, room hire and delivery charges all drift the same way. If you do not have the cost history — and most people do not — put in one change row per line with the difference between what it cost you then and what it costs you now, and every total in the file is right from the first day.
The worked example
The worked list has 54 lines and $816,399 of sales a year at today’s prices. They were priced at a 60.0% margin and are now making 54.6% — a drift of 5.4 points, worth $44,207 a year, with 48 of them over a year old and the oldest price 29 months back.
Restoring the margins those lines were actually priced at would be worth $116,774, and the top ten lines alone account for $40,369 of it. One line makes the pattern plain: priced in March 2024 at $5.80 when it cost $2.09, it costs $2.58 today, so the same price is now a 55.5% margin instead of 64%. Packaging, not ingredients, did the most damage at 35.2% of the drift.
How it works
Compatible with Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create, nothing to install.
The download has two workbooks: one with the example above already filled in, so you can see what every column expects, and the same file completely blank for your own figures. A plain-English guide comes as a PDF. Order on WhatsApp — $9
Orders are taken on WhatsApp: message me and I’ll send the payment details, then the files as soon as the payment is confirmed.
A look inside the file
Questions people actually ask
How do I work out how far my prices have fallen behind my costs?
For each line you type what it cost the day you set the price and what it costs now, and the file shows the margin you priced at against the margin you are making today. In the worked list of 54 lines that is 60.0% priced against 54.6% now — 5.4 points of drift worth $44,207 a year on $816,399 of sales. One line was priced in March 2024 at $5.80 when it cost $2.09 (a 64% margin); it costs $2.58 today, so the same price is now 55.5%, and it would have to be $7.20 to be back where it was set.
Is this only for products?
No — a price is a price. Day rates, service plans, retainers, hourly rates, room hire, delivery charges: anything you set once and then leave alone. It holds 80 lines you sell and 400 cost-change rows across seven linked tabs, and it ranks every line by what the gap is worth over a year, so in the worked list the top ten lines alone are $40,369 — 34.6% of the whole gap. You can have most of it back in an afternoon.
What if I do not have the cost history, or cannot remember when I set a price?
Most people do not have the history and it does not matter — put in one change row per line with the difference between what it cost you then and what it costs you now, labelled Something else, and every total in the file is right from the first day. For the date, use the oldest one you can defend and write it in the notes: an approximate date makes the figure approximately right, which is infinitely better than not having it. The detail builds up from there as real changes arrive, and the By What Changed tab just gets more useful over time.
Does it work in Google Sheets or do I need Excel?
Both — it is built as .xlsx for Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, and it loads into Google Sheets through File then Import then Upload. LibreOffice opens it too. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create, nothing to install and no subscription: you download the file and it is yours.
Does it tell me what to charge?
No — it tells you what price would restore the margin that line was actually priced at, not the margin you would like, and what you do about it is a commercial decision. It is not a stock, ordering or purchasing system, not a recipe or bill-of-materials costing package, and not a forecast of what costs will do next. It is connected to nothing: no syncing, no logins, no supplier portals and no password ever requested. What it does give you is the sentence to say out loud — in the worked list packaging did 35.2% of the damage and ingredients 32.1%.
Need it built around your business?
This file assumes a price list you set once and then leave alone, with costs moving underneath it. If yours works differently — prices fixed by an annual contract you can only reopen at renewal, a list where the same item sells at three different trade levels, or costing that has to come off a recipe or bill of materials rather than one unit cost — I can build the same drift arithmetic around the way your pricing actually works.
All other templates are listed on the Excel & Google Sheets Templates page.