QuickCosting vs. an AI agent on your spreadsheet.

Both can cost a product. They fail in completely different ways, and the difference only shows up once more than one person depends on the number.

We make costing software, so treat the recommendation accordingly. Every claim below is checkable in the product, including the row where the spreadsheet wins.

The short answer

An AI agent is better at answering a question about your spreadsheet. A costing system is better at holding a number still while five people work off it. The agent is genuinely good: it reads your sheet, writes formulas, explains what it did. For a solo maker with forty items that may be all you need. What it does not give you is a structure that stays the same when you are not watching.

Seven things that actually differ

• Changing one material price. QuickCosting: everything recalculates, including nested subcomponents. AI agent: it has to find every dependent cell.
• Overhead and G&A allocation. QuickCosting: one method, every product — expense pools with an allocation base you choose. AI agent: the method can drift, because it applies what it inferred from the sheet.
• Getting a supplier invoice into your costs. QuickCosting: drop the PDF in and the lines are read, currency converted, and written to your catalog for you to confirm. AI agent: paste it, then check every line landed in the right row.
• Cost for a team of five. QuickCosting: the fifth person is free, because it is one subscription per store with unlimited users. AI agent: three bills per person — the office suite you already pay for, an AI seat on top of it, and a seat on whatever wires the two together.
• Trusting the number. QuickCosting: the same answer twice, because the arithmetic is fixed code. AI agent: confidently wrong is possible, and a spreadsheet will not tell you it happened.
• Doing something we never planned for. A blank sheet does anything. This is the real advantage of the spreadsheet, and it is a big one.
• Getting started from nothing. Even. An afternoon either way: you build a catalog and pools with us, you build a sheet and prompts with the agent.

Is QuickCosting for you?

Yes, if any of this sounds familiar: your material prices move and your selling prices have to follow, you have real overhead to spread rather than a markup you guessed at, you want the same answer today and next quarter, you would rather cost products than maintain a model, or you want the number in one place, whether that is just you or a team.