Ringing up a sale with a line at the booth
- In a spreadsheet
- Typing into small cells on a phone, or tally marks on paper to enter later
- In TentTally
- Tap a product tile; a multi-item cart takes a few taps
Market sales spreadsheet vs. TentTally
Your spreadsheet works. Until market day.
Most vendors start with a spreadsheet, and plenty stay there happily. Here's an honest look at where it holds up, where it gets painful, and how to move over without retyping your product list.
Side by side
Sales tax
- In a spreadsheet
- A formula per row — and remembering which market charges which rate
- In TentTally
- A rate per market (or per market day), applied and locked in on every sale
Stock on hand
- In a spreadsheet
- Subtract sales from counts by hand after each market
- In TentTally
- Goes down as you record sales; production batches add to it
What to pack for Saturday
- In a spreadsheet
- Scroll back through old tabs and guess
- In TentTally
- Suggested quantities per product from what sold at that market, against what you've already made
Profit per product
- In a spreadsheet
- Works if every sale row carries the right cost
- In TentTally
- Each sale records its cost, so margins stay right even after you change prices
Custom orders and deposits
- In a spreadsheet
- Another tab, or a text thread
- In TentTally
- Customer, deposit, due date, and reserved stock in one place
Letting a helper ring up sales
- In a spreadsheet
- Sharing the sheet usually shares everything in it, costs included
- In TentTally
- A cashier login that only opens the sale screen — no costs, margins, or reports
End-of-season tax report
- In a spreadsheet
- Build the pivot table yourself
- In TentTally
- Tax report by market, category, and rate, exportable to CSV
Try it at your next market
See how the packing list, tax reports, and cashier mode work.
When a spreadsheet is enough
If you sell a handful of products at a few markets a year, don't collect sales tax, and work the booth alone, a spreadsheet is probably all you need — and it's free. It gets harder once any of these show up: more than a couple dozen products, a market every weekend, different tax rates at different markets, stock you need to plan production around, custom orders, or a helper at the booth.
Bring your spreadsheet with you
Save your product sheet as a CSV and import it: map your columns once, and anything TentTally doesn't have a field for becomes a custom attribute on the product. Already sell with Square? You can import straight from your Square catalog instead. And it goes both ways — your sales log and reports export to CSV whenever you want them in a spreadsheet again.
Free product & pricing spreadsheet template
A starter sheet with columns for product name, SKU, category, unit cost, price, and batch size. Use it on its own in Excel or Google Sheets — or fill it in and import it into TentTally as-is. No sign-up needed.
Download the template (CSV)Switching questions
- Yes. Save it as a CSV file (Excel and Google Sheets both can) and upload it. You map your columns to TentTally's fields, and any column TentTally doesn't recognize — scent, size, material — becomes a custom attribute on the product. Starting from scratch? Use the free template on this page.
- Not currently — the import covers your product list. TentTally starts tracking sales from your first market with it, so keep the old spreadsheet for earlier seasons' history.
- Yes. Your sales log and every report export to CSV, which opens in Excel or Google Sheets.
- No. TentTally runs in the browser on your phone, tablet, or computer — the same way you'd open a Google Sheet.
Can I import my existing product spreadsheet?
Can I import my past sales from the spreadsheet?
Can I get my data back out into a spreadsheet?
Do I have to install anything?
Try it at your next market.
Import your products, ring up a Saturday, and compare it to the spreadsheet yourself.
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