Comparison
LASI vs a spreadsheet for live auction inventory
The short answer: a spreadsheet is enough while you sell from one bin bought at one price and do the books yourself. It stops being enough at the second restock, the first cancelled order and the first host on commission, because from there the sheet is confidently wrong rather than missing.
Worth saying up front: LASI is the software on the other side of this comparison, so we have a side. The spreadsheet wins some of these rows and this page says which.
When a spreadsheet is the right tool
- You are testing whether live selling works for you at all. Do not pay for software yet.
- Everything you sell came from one buy at one price, so an average unit cost and the real unit cost are the same number.
- You stream, pack and do the books yourself, so nobody else needs access to anything.
- You run a show or two a week and ten minutes with a calculator afterwards is not a burden. The free profit calculator does that sum without an account.
The five places it breaks
None of these announce themselves. The sheet keeps producing a number; the number is just no longer true.
1. The second buy at a different price
You buy 100 units at $2, then restock 100 more at $4. A sheet that divides total spend by total units now says every unit cost $3, including the ones you bought at $2. Sell 80 of the old stock on tonight's show and the sheet books $240 of cost against it; what those units actually cost was $160. That is $80 of profit missing from one show, and it reappears later on a show that did nothing to earn it.
LASI keeps each buy as its own cost layer and sells from the oldest first, so the cost stamped on a sale is what that unit was bought for.
2. The order that cancels after the hammer
A buyer wins, the item is set aside, and the order is cancelled an hour later. Count the rack back at the end of the night without fetching that unit and "staged minus remaining" books it as sold. The sheet is now one unit short of the shelf, and nothing will ever tell you which unit or when.
LASI lists the show’s cancelled orders line by line as a step before the count, so the units go back on the rack before anything is tallied.
3. Shipping, which is its own profit line
TikTok collects shipping from the buyer per order. You pay the carrier per box. A buyer who wins four lots paid shipping four times and ships in one box, and that spread is real money — but it lives in the carrier’s monthly invoice, not in anything keyed to a show.
LASI records what buyers paid for shipping and what the labels cost against the same show, so shipping margin is a line on the night’s profit.
4. Commission
A host on a percentage needs the show’s net, which needs the fees and the cost of goods, which need everything above to be right. With two hosts on one stream it also needs to know who was on air for which item, and an order’s timestamp will not tell you: checkout trails the hammer.
LASI files commission when the show closes, and splits a shared show by sticker number rather than by clock time.
5. Two people, one file
The sheet works while one person keeps it. Add a packer ticking boxes, a manager entering a restock and a host checking their pay, and it becomes a file several people can each quietly break — and one where everyone who can open it can see what everything cost.
LASI has roles: a packer never sees a price, a host sees their own shows and their own commission, and cost and profit are for admins.
The first one is worth reading at length if you buy pallets: why pallet price ÷ item count breaks on your second buy. The third has its own guide too: shipping as a profit line.
Side by side
| Spreadsheet | LASI | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | From $149 a month, after a free trial. |
| Setup | None. You already have one. | About an afternoon: import bins with their opening costs, or a Shopify catalog in one step. |
| Unit cost after a restock | A blended average, unless you build and maintain layers by hand. | FIFO cost layers, kept automatically; real cost stamped on every sale. |
| Profit for one show | Possible, by hand, each night. | Calculated at close, and live during a show selling from one bin. |
| TikTok Shop orders | Exported and pasted in. | Pulled from the Shop API and linked to the stream they came from. |
| Packing and labels | Not a spreadsheet’s job. | Scan a sticker, the box’s label prints. Buying labels in LASI is coming soon. |
| Who can see costs | Anyone with the link. | Admins only, enforced on the server and in the database. |
| Flexibility | Total. Any column, any formula, today. | It works the way it works; you adapt your night to one of three show flows. |
So is it worth paying for?
The spreadsheet costs nothing to run and something to be wrong. The way to decide is to price the wrongness: take last month, and ask what a mis-costed restock, a few units lost to uncounted cancels and an unclaimed shipping spread came to. If that is comfortably less than the subscription, keep the sheet. If you cannot answer the question at all, that is usually the answer.