Excel does not remember what you priced last year.

A spreadsheet works out exactly what was typed into it. It does not know the planing allowance, it does not round up to a production thickness, and it does not give an offer a number. But the worst of it is not the sum — it is that every new estimate starts with searching: which file had the oak rate, which sheet had the sanding price, which version is the last one.

And it has no memory: a sheet does not know what it said last year, it has no rule about what must not be written, and it holds two versions of one number without ever mentioning it.

Alongside it stand quite different tools, and none of them is an opponent — they answer different questions:

• Furniture CAD and CAM. They draw kitchens out of a parametric library and drive the CNC. That is different work from the question of which blank a turned leg comes off, and a chair is not a carcass.

• Trade programs for the whole office. Orders, time tracking, a planning board, invoices — the estimate is one module among many. If you want one system for everything, that is Formifex, the manufacturing operating system: catalogue and configurator, orders, purchasing and suppliers, stock, invoices and CMR, the product passport, the partner portal and the analytics, fitted to any manufacturer. If you want less, Kubifex Pro runs the material chain with CoC and the audit report, orders and deliveries, the invoice, the CMR, the product passport, packaging — and Estifex. On its own, Estifex does one thing.

• Cutting optimisers. They lay parts out on a sheet and work out offcut by area. For carcass work that is the right tool. About solid timber they say nothing: no planing allowance, no production thickness, no gluing, no defects.

• Free board calculators. They give the volume of the part you typed in. No allowance, no production blank, no customer, no offer and no number on it.

• Estifex. Your costs entered once; after that a drawing, a whole product, a price, a cutting list and an offer with a number. No stock, no CNC, no kitchen library.