Most early-stage Indian sellers we talk to run their entire ops in Excel for the first 6 to 18 months. It works. Until it does not. Here is how to tell when it stops working.
At 1 to 5 orders a day
Excel is your friend. Order list in column A, SKU in column B, status in column C. Print slips manually, close manifests by hand, paste invoices into a folder.
The honest read: at this scale, no operating tool will pay off its setup cost. You are under the threshold where ops volume costs you visible money.
The trap: stay in Excel too long, and you internalise the operational pattern. Then graduating to a system feels like extra work.
At 5 to 25 orders a day
This is the zone Robnu is built for. Excel works mechanically — the formulas still fit, the slip queue is still print-by-hand. But:
- Confirmation cycles take 38 minutes instead of 8.
- Slip queue gets behind.
- Manifest closes at 23:42 instead of 17:30.
- Deductions land for missed SLA, slip mismatches, and other silent-loss vectors you do not catch.
The silent cost of Excel-only at this volume is roughly the cost of 2 to 4 hours a day of operating time plus 5 to 10 percent of gross to deductions. For a 15-orders-a-day seller doing ₹15 lakh a month gross, that is ₹75K to ₹1.5L a month of leakage on top of the ops time.
This is where Robnu pays its setup cost back in the first month. And Robnu is free during early access, so the trade is “your time vs setting up an account.”
At 25-plus orders a day
Above the 25-orders-a-day floor, Excel-only becomes the constraint. You start hiring an ops person whose job is keeping the spreadsheet alive. The cost of the hire (₹15K to ₹25K a month) plus the residual leakage (still 3 to 5 percent of gross) is significant.
This is the volume where systems pay off cleanly. Robnu, an OMS, or both — depending on whether you are single-channel or multi-channel.
When to add an OMS
Different question from “when to leave Excel.” See the OMS comparison post for the full version.
Short version: add an OMS when your inventory ledger across channels genuinely splits, when you have a procurement function, or when accounting starts pushing back on settlements. Robnu plays alongside an OMS — they are different layers.
The signs you have outgrown Excel
Practical indicators:
- You have a tab labelled “today” in a spreadsheet, and it has been “today” for 3 days.
- You print slips manually and re-print at least one a day.
- You miss SLA at least once a week (silent or loud).
- You close manifests after 22:00 more than half the time.
- You do not dispute deductions because “it is not worth the time.”
- Your accountant asks you for a settlement summary and you spend 4 hours building it.
If three or more of those, you are in the 5 to 25 zone Robnu was built for. The graduation cost is roughly an evening to set up.
Start free
Start free on AJIO. Free during early access. Forever free under 25 orders a day. The graduation from Excel does not cost you money; it costs you a 30-minute setup and the willingness to change a habit.