Comparison
Pakka vs Excel and Google Sheets
Excel and Google Sheets are general-purpose spreadsheets. Most interior firms run their BOQs, payment trackers and vendor lists on them today.
The short answer
Spreadsheets are free, flexible and familiar, and they are fine for one person and a few projects. They break when several people edit the same numbers: formulas drift, versions multiply, and nothing connects the quote to site progress or payments. Pakka keeps one record, so a won quote becomes the budget, site work and payment stages without re-typing.
Side by side.
| Excel and Google Sheets | Pakka | |
|---|---|---|
| Quotes and BOQ | Built by hand or copied from the last project. Rates live in old files. | Lines drafted from the brief and floor plan; rates from your own library; missing rates flagged. |
| Errors | A broken SUM range or a stale rate is silent until someone spots it. | Rates come from one library; low-margin quotes are flagged for approval. |
| Versions | Quote_final_v3_revised.xlsx, shared on WhatsApp. | Versions you can compare, sent as a protected link. |
| Site progress | A separate sheet someone updates when they remember. | Site reports on WhatsApp; tasks, QC and snags update from it. |
| Payments | A tracker that says what someone typed. | Payable when QC passes, approved by a second person, with the bank reference recorded. |
| Who sees what | Share the file and everyone sees everything, including margins. | Engineers never see money; salespeople never see cost; clients see curated progress. |
| Cost | Free or nearly free. | Priced per firm and per desk, with no seat fees for site teams. |
About Excel and Google Sheets: General knowledge of spreadsheet tools.
Where each is stronger.
Excel and Google Sheets is stronger at
- Free, and everyone already knows how to use them.
- Total flexibility: any layout, any formula.
- Good for one-off analysis and quick what-ifs.
Pakka is stronger at
- One record from quote to final payment, with no re-typing between sheets.
- Rates and recipes from a library instead of copied cells.
- Site, QC and money connected, so a payment can wait for checked work.
- Permissions: margins and costs stay with the people who need them.
Which should you choose?
Choose Excel and Google Sheets if
You run one or two projects at a time, one person owns all the numbers, and nobody else edits them.
Choose Pakka if
Several people touch the same project, you have more than a few live sites, or a spreadsheet error has already cost you money.
Give us your messiest project. The first one is free.
Ten founding firms get their first project on Pakka free, set up with them over WhatsApp in an afternoon. Everyone else joins the waitlist, and we open in batches.
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