PeasyOrders vs. Excel for wholesale order entry

At a glance

Feature	PeasyOrders	Excel
How orders get in	The email is forwarded in; the body plus PDF and spreadsheet attachments become a draft to review. Phone orders are added in one click as manual entries.	A person reads each email or attachment and types the lines into cells.
Catalog matching	Lines match against your QuickBooks items, with each customer's shorthand learned from confirmed corrections.	A manual lookup, or formulas someone builds and maintains.
Per-customer pricing	A pricing engine proposes each customer's price from your past QuickBooks invoices — you accept before it applies, and each line shows the rule that set it.	A separate price sheet, old invoices, or the memory of whoever types the order.
Review and traceability	An operator confirms every draft, each value shows the source it came from line by line, and unresolved lines block confirmation.	Whoever types makes the call, and there's no record of which message produced which number.
Where the order ends up	QuickBooks Online as an Estimate (default, configurable) — or Google Sheets and CSV for the spreadsheet workflows you keep.	In the spreadsheet — and typed again into QuickBooks when it's time to invoice.
Analysis and reporting	Not its job.	Excel's real strength: pivot tables, ad-hoc analysis, one-off models. Keep it for exactly that.
Cost	Plans at $99, $199, and $349 per month by confirmed order volume, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.	Included with Microsoft 365 — Business Basic at $7 and Business Standard at $14 per user per month on Microsoft's published pricing, as of July 2026. The real cost is the hours spent reading and retyping.

The honest comparison

Excel isn't PeasyOrders' competitor — it's where the retyping happens today. Most small and mid-sized US wholesale distributors on QuickBooks Online don't run "Excel order software"; they have a person who reads each emailed order and types it into a spreadsheet, and often again into QuickBooks. PeasyOrders removes that manual re-keying, not the spreadsheet.

So this isn't a head-to-head between two products. On one side is a manual process built around a workbook; on the other is a capture layer that reads the emailed order — the body plus PDF and spreadsheet attachments — matches it to your QuickBooks items, applies that customer's price, and hands you a draft a person confirms. The confirmed order exports to QuickBooks Online as an Estimate, or to Google Sheets and CSV if the spreadsheet is where you work.

Excel itself stays. For reporting, pivot tables, and ad-hoc analysis it's the better tool, and PeasyOrders doesn't compete there. The honest question is narrower: is the manual entry into the spreadsheet costing enough to fix?

What the manual entry actually costs

The Excel workflow has no line on a software invoice, which is exactly why its cost hides — it shows up as time. As a purely illustrative sketch: an hour a day of reading and re-keying is roughly 20 hours a month, and at a loaded admin cost of around $22 an hour that's on the order of $440 a month — before counting a wrong quantity that ships or the orders that wait while the one person who knows the workbook is away.

Those numbers are illustrative, not a promise; your real figure depends on volume, order mix, and wages. The manual order entry cost calculator works it through with your own inputs. The software itself is nearly free either way — Microsoft 365 runs $7 to $14 per user per month as of July 2026 — which is why the license was never the number that mattered.

The same order, typed and captured

A regular account emails on Sunday night: "Usual cuts, but make the brisket eight cases and add two cases of the short ribs — need it Friday," with their marked-up PDF cut sheet attached.

Typed by hand, someone reads it Monday morning, remembers what "the usual" means for this account, looks up each item, digs out the right price from a separate sheet or an old invoice, and keys the lines into the workbook — then into QuickBooks later. If they mistype a quantity, nobody knows until it ships wrong. If they're out, the order waits.

Captured, the same email becomes a draft in a review queue: "the usual cuts" resolve from this account's confirmed history, the brisket quantity is read as written and the short ribs match against your QuickBooks items, the account's pricing is applied with the rule that set it shown on each line, and every value links back to the part of the email or attachment it came from. Anything unclear is flagged rather than guessed. You confirm, and the order lands in QuickBooks Online as an Estimate — or in your spreadsheet as clean rows.

Typed into the workbook

Read the email Monday morning

recall what “the usual” means for this account

Look up items and prices

a separate sheet, an old invoice

Key it into Excel — then QuickBooks

a mistyped quantity ships wrong

Costs time instead of money — which is why it hides

Captured (PeasyOrders)

“Usual cuts but make the brisket eight cases”

forwarded in with its PDF

Draft matched and priced

every value linked to its source

You review and confirm

In QuickBooks Online as an Estimate — or clean rows in your sheet

When the Excel workflow is still the right call

No tool should be sold past the point where it helps.

• Low volume. If order entry takes minutes a day, a capture layer is unnecessary weight.
• Uniform inputs. Orders that arrive in one consistent shape leave little to interpret.
• Analysis is the need. For reporting and modeling, Excel is the right tool — that job isn't changing.
• The math doesn't fit yet. A workflow your team trusts has real value; measure again when volume grows.

When PeasyOrders is the better fit

PeasyOrders is built for small and mid-sized US wholesale distributors on QuickBooks Online whose customers send orders written in their own words. If a typical week includes re-typing line items from emailed orders and attached PDFs or spreadsheets — into a workbook, into QuickBooks, or both — that's the job it exists to remove.

• The reading becomes automatic; the judgment stays human. Email is forwarded in, phone orders are added in one click as manual entries, and a person confirms every draft before anything exports.
• The pricing QuickBooks can't do. QuickBooks Online doesn't expose per-customer pricing to integrations, so PeasyOrders acts as the pricing engine: on setup it reads your past invoices once and proposes each customer's price, which you accept, adjust, or discard before it applies.
• Traceability a spreadsheet can't give. Every value shows the message it came from, line by line, and unresolved lines block confirmation.
• It feeds the tools you already use. QuickBooks Online as an Estimate by default; Google Sheets and CSV for the spreadsheet side.
• Self-serve at a published price. Plans at $99, $199, and $349 per month by confirmed order volume (200, 600, and 1,500 orders, with 3, 6, and 12 users), annual billing gets two months free, and every plan carries a 30-day money-back guarantee.

A pragmatic conclusion

Excel is not the problem, and PeasyOrders doesn't ask you to give it up. The question is whether the manual entry into it — the reading, interpreting, price-hunting, and typing — has grown into a real cost in hours, errors, and stalled orders. If it has, a capture layer that reads the order and feeds QuickBooks Online or your spreadsheet is the direct fix. If it hasn't, keep the workflow you trust and run the numbers again in a few months.

When to choose PeasyOrders

• Someone on your team spends real time each week reading emailed orders and typing them into a spreadsheet, then again into QuickBooks.
• Entry mistakes — a wrong quantity, a missed line, a stale price — have started reaching customers.
• Orders stall when the one person who knows the workbook and the price sheets is out.
• You run on QuickBooks Online and want reviewed orders to land as Estimates with each customer's pricing already applied.

When to choose Excel

• Your order volume is modest and typing orders in takes minutes, not hours — software would be unnecessary weight.
• Your orders arrive in a consistent shape that drops into the spreadsheet with little interpretation.
• What you need is analysis and reporting, not capture — that's Excel's home turf, and PeasyOrders doesn't compete there.
• Your team trusts the current workflow and the math doesn't yet justify a change.