---
title: "How to Move Freight Pricing Off Excel - Pragmatic Growth"
description: "How to move freight pricing off Excel: one rate book, quote requests read from email into one queue, approvals and follow-ups. Steps, mistakes and timing."
url: "https://pragmaticgrowth.com/guides/freight-pricing-off-excel"
language: "en"
alternate: "https://pragmaticgrowth.com/tr/guides/freight-pricing-off-excel"
---

# How to Move Freight Pricing Off Excel

Pricing

Moving freight pricing off Excel means putting your contracted and spot rates, incoming quote requests, approvals, sent quotes and follow-ups into one system the whole pricing team works in. Do it in order: map how a quote flows today with your pricers, agree the process, bring the rates in, run old and new side by side, then switch.

By [Serkan Haşlak](https://pragmaticgrowth.com/about) · Published 2026-09-24 · Updated 2026-09-24

## In Short

- Excel is rarely the problem on its own. The problem is that rates, requests, approvals and follow-ups live in different files, inboxes and heads.
- Start with the pricers, not the software: follow real requests from the inbox to the sent quote before anything is built.
- Bring the rates in, run the old and new way side by side for a short, fixed period, then switch on a set date.
- Keep Excel for one-off analysis and tender workings. Stop using it as the rate book, the request list or the follow-up tracker.
- AJ Worldwide's 14 pricers moved from three spreadsheets and a shared inbox to one system in under five months, and every quote now gets a follow-up.

## What Does Moving Pricing Off Excel Actually Mean?

It does not mean replacing one spreadsheet with a bigger one, or buying a tool and asking pricers to retype everything into it. It means the work of quoting happens in one place, from the moment a request arrives to the moment a customer says yes or goes silent.

In practice, five things move into one system:

- One rate book: contracted carrier, trucking and rail rates, plus spot rates, searchable by lane and valid dates.
- One request queue: every quote request from the shared inbox, read into the same form, with an owner and a status.
- Approvals: margins and sign-offs follow agreed rules instead of email threads.
- Quote history: what was offered, to whom, at what price and by whom, kept with the request.
- Follow-ups: every sent quote gets a date to chase it, and quotes nobody answers are closed instead of forgotten.

Excel can still be where carrier rate sheets arrive and where a manager runs a one-off analysis. It stops being the place the department runs on.

**The same pricing work, on Excel and email versus in one system**

| Work | On Excel and email | In one pricing system |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Rates | Several workbooks, the latest copy on someone's laptop | One rate book, searchable by lane and date |
| Requests | Read in the inbox, retyped into a sheet | Read into one queue with an owner |
| Missing details | Found when the pricer starts the quote | Listed when the request comes in |
| Approvals | Reply-all email threads | Rules for who approves what |
| Quote history | Sent folders and file names | Kept with each request and customer |
| Follow-ups | Whoever remembers | A date per quote and an overdue list |
| Reporting | Built by hand every Monday | Read from the system |

## Why Excel and a Shared Inbox Stop Working

A spreadsheet and a shared mailbox work well for a small desk. They start to break when the number of pricers, lanes and requests grows, and the signs are the same in most forwarders:

- Quote requests are read by hand and retyped, and a few slip through every week.
- Contracted ocean, trucking and rail rates live in different files, and only one or two people know which copy is current.
- Margins and wording change with whoever prepared the quote.
- Nobody can say which quotes were followed up, won or lost, or why.

The tools themselves set limits. Microsoft's own guidance on co-authoring says that when two people change the same thing, the last change saved generally wins, and that one person opening the file in a version that does not support co-authoring locks it for everyone. A Microsoft 365 shared mailbox supports up to 25 users, and you cannot stop users from deleting messages in it. None of that is a flaw for a shared file or a front-desk inbox. It is a poor base for a department that prices every day.

Rates in three workbooks, requests retyped from the inbox → One rate book, one request queue, every quote tracked

## Start With How a Quote Really Flows

The first step is not choosing software. Sit with the pricers and follow real quote requests from the inbox to the customer, as they happen, for a few days. Written procedures describe how quoting should work; the desk shows how it does.

Then draw the ideal version on a canvas and agree it with the people who will use it: which facts are needed before a quote can start, who approves which quotes, and what happens when a deal is won. When the pricers have shaped the process, the system feels familiar on the first day instead of being something done to them.

At AJ Worldwide we traced quote requests this way before a line of code was written. These are the questions the map has to answer:

- Every channel a request arrives through, and who owns it
- The facts a pricer needs before a quote can start
- Where each kind of rate lives and how it is looked up
- Who approves what, and on which margin or customer rules
- What happens when a quote is won, lost or never answered
- What managers need to see without building a report

## Bring the Rates In, Run Both, Then Switch

Once the process is agreed, build and move in stages rather than all at once. The order matters because each step makes the next one safer.

Connecting the inbox does not mean a new address. Microsoft Graph, the API behind Microsoft 365 mail, can read shared mailboxes as well as personal ones, so the system reads from the address customers already use.

Keep the parallel run short and fixed. If both ways of working run for months, pricers keep the spreadsheet as the real record and the system becomes a second place to type the same thing.

1. **Map the quote flow**: Follow real requests with the pricers, from inbox to sent quote.
2. **Agree the process**: Draw the ideal flow on a canvas and agree it before building. *The canvas becomes the specification.*
3. **Bring the rates in**: Load the current contracted and spot rates into one rate book; leave expired files behind.
4. **Connect the inbox**: Requests come into one queue straight from the shared inbox, nothing forwarded by hand.
5. **Run in parallel**: Price live requests in the system while the old files stay open, for a set period.
6. **Switch**: Pick a date, close the old files for quoting, and keep improving from what the team asks for.

## What to Keep in Excel

Excel is a good tool; it is just the wrong home for a live pricing department. The line is simple: anything the whole team relies on every day belongs in the system, and personal analysis can stay in a spreadsheet.

Carrier rate sheets usually keep arriving as Excel files. That is fine. The difference is that they are imported into the rate book once, not copied into five personal versions.

**Where each piece of pricing work belongs after the move**

| Work | Where it belongs | Why |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Carrier rate sheets as received | Excel, then imported | Carriers send them that way; import once |
| Rate lookups for a quote | The system | One current rate for everyone |
| The list of open requests | The system | Every request has an owner and status |
| Approvals and margins | The system | Same rules for every pricer |
| Follow-up dates | The system | Nothing depends on memory |
| One-off tender workings | Excel is fine | A single analysis, not daily work |
| Ad hoc analysis of exports | Excel is fine | Read-only use of system data |

## Common Mistakes When Moving Pricing Off Excel

Most failed moves fail for the same few reasons, and none of them is technical:

- Buying or building before mapping. The system copies the org chart instead of how quotes really flow.
- Designing for the manager's report instead of the pricer's day. If quoting gets slower, pricers go back to their files.
- Importing every old file. Bring in the rates that are valid now; archive the rest.
- Switching everyone overnight with no parallel run, or running in parallel with no end date.
- Letting a shadow spreadsheet live on. If one rate type stays in Excel, pricers keep two places open.
- Automating judgement. Reading a request can be automated; choosing the price and approving it should stay with people.
- Forgetting the follow-up rule. Without a date per quote and a rule for silent quotes, the new system fills with open quotes nobody chases.

## How Long Does It Take?

It depends on how many rate sources, request channels and approval rules you have, so treat any fixed figure with care. What we can say is what happened at AJ Worldwide.

The pricing team ran on three spreadsheets and a shared inbox. It took under five months from the first build to the team quoting in the system, which it has done since May 2026. Today 14 pricers work every request in one system, every quote gets a follow-up date set by its complexity, and quotes with no answer after a month are closed as lost.

Going live was not the end. Since go-live the system has had three to four updates a week, and tenders, export contracts, rail and the sales team were added along the way. Plan for that: the first release should cover the daily quoting flow, and the rest can follow once the team works in it.

## When a Spreadsheet Is Still Enough

Not every pricing desk needs a system. A spreadsheet is still enough when:

- You quote a handful of jobs a month and one person does all of it.
- Rates come from one or two sources and rarely change.
- Customers do not chase quotes, and you rarely need to know why you lost one.

The move starts to pay when a second or third pricer joins, when requests get lost in the inbox, when pricing slows down because one person is on holiday, or when you cannot tell which quotes you win. At that point the spreadsheet is no longer a tool; it is the bottleneck.

## Questions

### Do we have to stop using Excel completely?

No. Carrier rate sheets can keep arriving as Excel files and managers can still analyse exports in a spreadsheet. What moves is the daily work: the rate book, the request list, approvals and follow-ups.

### Will our customers have to send requests differently?

No. Customers keep emailing the address they know. The system connects to that shared inbox and reads the requests from it.

### Where does AI come in?

In reading requests. AI can sort the inbox and read a free-text request, attachments included, into the quote form and list what is missing. Choosing the price and approving the quote stay with your pricers.

### Who owns the system once it is built?

When we build it, you do. The code and the data are yours, and the system keeps changing as your pricing does.

## Sources

- [Microsoft Support: Collaborate on Excel workbooks at the same time with co-authoring](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/collaborate-on-excel-workbooks-at-the-same-time-with-co-authoring-7152aa8b-b791-414c-a3bb-3024e46fb104)
- [Microsoft Learn: About shared mailboxes in Microsoft 365](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/admin/email/about-shared-mailboxes)
- [Microsoft Learn: Outlook mail API overview (Microsoft Graph)](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/outlook-mail-concept-overview)

## The Case Behind This Guide

### How AJ Worldwide Moved Pricing Off Excel

AJ Worldwide · International freight forwarding

AJ Worldwide's pricing team ran on three spreadsheets and a shared inbox. Since May 2026 it has worked in one pricing system, and the system keeps changing with the business.

- **14 pricers** work every request in one system, instead of three spreadsheets and a shared inbox
- **Under 5 months** from the first build to the team quoting in the system

[Read the story](https://pragmaticgrowth.com/work/ajww-pricing)

## The System We Build

[Pricing & Quoting](https://pragmaticgrowth.com/services/pricing): One system for rates, quotes and approvals.

[Explore the service](https://pragmaticgrowth.com/services/pricing)

## Related Guides

- [Freight Quoting Software or a System Built for You?](https://pragmaticgrowth.com/guides/freight-quoting-software-vs-custom-system): Buy off-the-shelf quoting software if your quote flow is close to the industry standard and you need it running within weeks; have a system built around your process if the way you price is part of how you win and every product needs workarounds. The two can also work together: a rate platform can feed a system built around your own workflow.
- [How Quote Requests Get Read From Email Automatically](https://pragmaticgrowth.com/guides/read-quote-requests-from-email): A system connected to your shared inbox reads each quote request, email body and Excel or PDF attachments included, into the fields a pricer needs, lists what is missing, matches the customer and the rates, and puts a prefilled request in a queue. AI does the reading; a pricer sets the price and a person approves the quote.

[All guides](https://pragmaticgrowth.com/guides)

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