Albion Trading Toolkit: Spreadsheet for Market Flippers

EDIT:
Temporarily un-enlisting this guide as I make some major improvements, including full automation (no more manually recording prices)!

EDIT (2):
There didn't appear to be any activity related to this toolkit. Furthermore, I experienced some security concerns that seemed potentially related to my sharing of files on my Google Drive account. So, I have taken the toolkit offline for now.
Will create a temporary account to store the sheet if I get any requests to do so.

EDIT (3):
https://mega.nz/folder/au4iyQjI#M_UIhXGojMeOf6gyAIrpsA
This is the new location of the workbook. The file ending in _v35 is the stable release. The workbook ending in _51 is an experimental version that offers a way to automatically collect prices.

Unfortunately, I cannot offer support/help as I am preoccupied with my graduate studies right now. :/

You'll have to unblock both files in the security settings, as Windows is likely to flag the file as malicious (that's just because I used Megaupload to host them).

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This guide provides an MS Excel workbook with powerful features to help merchants maximize their profits.

Requirements:
-MS Excel: This tool will not work properly with Google Sheets or other software.
-Willingness to manually collect prices: This tool does not automatically collect data from online sources. View FAQ for more info.

Overview

EDIT:
I'm unlisting this guide as I will no longer be able to offer improvements or support.
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This workbook was developed to help both aspiring and established merchants alike pursue market flipping with precision. This tool was borne out of frustration with all the currently available tools related to market flipping: They tend to be imprecise, rely on rules-of-thumb, employ old or obtuse data, and they tend to lack transparency in how calculations are performed or how data is collected.

Importantly, many tools require considerable investment on the part of the user to understand, whereas the more user-friendly tools are often outdated or unhelpful.
This workbook is fully transparent: You can see how everything works by viewing the relevant formulae and reading my comments. Users have full control over their data: You will know where all the numbers are coming from. More importantly, this workbook is user friendly in that it provides convenient tools to help you understand your own market data so that you can make trades with confidence.

Requirements:
1.) Recent version of Microsoft Excel
Due to the use of macros and Excel-specific formulae, I cannot convert this workbook to Google sheets.

2.) Willingness to enable macros
While the workbook will mostly work without macros, you may be unable to select specific towns to include/exclude from analyses. Other quality of life features will also be non-functional.

3.) Willingness to manually record market prices
This workbook does not automatically import market prices (see FAQ for more info).

Accessing the Workbook

Visit the Google Drive here, and download the Toolkit.xlsm:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1P0sH6_eKJM8hLMCAzc0j51gtZ-wJrAlt?usp=sharing

Please note that this workbook will NOT work properly with Google sheets. You must open it using Excel.

Features

The Logbook
A merchant’s journey begins with a Logbook.

1.) Records: Automatically calculates your trading profit and the silver that you currently have tied up in investments across the markets and banks of the game.

2.) Active Buy Orders and Storage: With minimal user input, the logbook tracks the products that are currently being purchased and those which await sell in your storage.

3.) Invoices: Track your current sell orders. Automatically calculates profit and cancellation/edit fees.


4.) Caerleon Risk Calculator: Helps determine whether it’s worthwhile to sell goods in Caerleon vs the safer markets. The tool considers the value of goods and gear to indicate the estimated risk, the weight capacity needed for the trip, the alternative profit one might make at a safer market, and even indicates how much real-world money (USD) one would have to spend to recoup losses due to being ganked.


Charts
Charting your path to prosperity

1.) Historical Buy and Sell Graph: Select a product to see the most expensive (“Sell”) and cheapest (“Buy”) prices between the various markets across time.



2.) Town Prices: A side-by-side comparison of an item’s price across towns of interest to you.



3.) “Buy or Sell” table: Perhaps the most useful feature of this workbook. Uses stats to determines which products should be purchased or sold at each market today.



Buy Orders
Your Oracle of investment insight

This sheet helps you plan whether (and at what price) goods are worth a buy order. This sheet automatically calculates profit and the weight of the goods. Many mistakes can be avoided by consulting this sheet.

Day Trading
The market flipping maverick

Day trading involves purchasing low at one market and selling high to another market within a single day. This reference sheet helps you do that profitably.
Day trading can be risky, so this reference sheet consults a few figures to help make sure you don’t over-invest in products. For instance, it will flag a warning if the goods may be too heavy for you to carry, if the buy or sell prices seem to high or low, or if the profit margin is too narrow to justify.



Luxury Goods
Indulge in Luxury: Your Guide to Opulent Trading

Ever wonder how to make money buying and selling the luxury good items? This sheet has everything you need to find out!

Getting Started

Step 1: Complete your Item list

Visit the “REFERENCE” tab to update the table of products you wish to track. Changes to this table will then update throughout the workbook. You may include up to 99 items. You may add, remove, and edit any items freely whenever you wish to edit the goods you’ll be tracking.
The “item weight” column is optional.
 


Step 2: Visit each market and update prices
With your product list ready, you may now start recording prices.

Collect prices using in-game data: Visit the relevant town’s market and observe prices by pressing the “buy” button on the relevant item. Then press the small arrow on the top right to display the item history. Select “4 weeks”. Hovering your mouse over the respective days shows the average price at which that item was sold during each of the prior 28 days. You may use the data point on the far right (such as the one highlighted in the screenshot below) for today’s current sell average, although you may wish to update this data point later.



Record prices in spreadsheet: Next, visit your spreadsheet. There are 6 tabs with town names. It is here that you will record prices for each town.

To record prices, simply type today’s date in the header row (the workbook was built around the format dd/mm/yyyy, but other formats should work… I think). Then record the relevant price for each day.



I recommend inputting at least the past 20 days’ worth of data for each item. However, you may begin using this workbook using only a single day’s worth of data, if you wish.


Step 3: All done. You’re now ready to use all the tools of this workbook!

FAQ

Why must I record prices manually? Why not use Albion Online Data?

~~ SHEET IS BEING UPDATED TO INCLUDE ALBION ONLINE DATA~~

Where are the Silver Per Hour Calculations, Transport times, etc?

The notion of calculating silver per hour is tricky because market flipping is not like clearing a dungeon. I cannot confidently estimate the time it will take to buy and sell products. This is because of difficulties in:

a.) Predicting travel times, which are a function of the mount one uses, the path one takes, and/or the stops one makes. And,

b.) Knowing the time it takes to record data, consult prices, log numbers, etc. Any sensible estimation of profit per hour should include this investment of time, too, not just travel time. But this setup time varies wildly between merchants and even with different types of trades.

Overall, the concept of silver-per-hour is incompatible with the design philosophy of this toolkit. Whereas other available market tools deal with generalities and rules-of-thumb that are needed to give a “silver per hour” estimate, this workbook deals with more concrete information and precise, data-driven predictions.

That said, someone else has provided a tool estimating travel costs here. You might be interested:
https://albionix.app/

p.s. I have no clue how the developer approximated “travel time”… perhaps I’ll ask them. Until you find answers to such questions yourself, I recommend using this tool cautiously.

Can I add more towns?

Unfortunately, adding additional towns will not be simple as many formulae and macros will need to be adjusted to compensate for the additions.

Initially, I chose this small selection of towns because earlier iterations of this workbook were computationally demanding, and additional towns would break the workbook. But as I’ve simplified my macros and formulae, this is no longer an issue.

So, I could conceivably expand this workbook to include more towns. But doing so would be a tremendous amount of work. Post a comment if you have need for additional marketplaces, and I will add the task to my to-do list.

What should I Craft/Refine/Etc?

There are other spreadsheets and tools you can find to help you with crafting and refining decisions. This workbook is designed to help the market flipper and does not consider crafting, refining, or the like.

Why are you giving this away? Won't it harm your profits?

Sharing knowledge is my kink.

Don't worry about this affecting your profits too much. While I've tried to make this workbook user friendly, I suspect that only the most dedicated of merchants are likely to use it.

[Count]

I'm sorry folks are still (somehow) finding this thread!
Must be frustrating to see incomplete work. Maybe I should set this to "private"?

Thanks for your interest though. I will say... doing this was a major ordeal and sapped away my actual interest in the game. I probably only made a few million from it before I abandoned the project and the game itself.

The earliest I might return to this is the Summer of 2025, after my PhD is done and there is room in my life for hobbies again!
I'll post a comment here if that happens

[Salty Mango]

I wish I was here sooner, I am considering making a similar spreadsheet. However after reading, I have realized that this is a huge project to undertake. I never got to take a look at it but from reading everything you've explained this s really impressive. If you ever open this project back up I would love to check it out.

[Count]

Thanks! I thought unlisting removed guides from search results...

Looking back over my work, I see I was so close to finishing! I might try to complete it this summer.

But unfortunately, the workbook will always use macros :(
I know that limits the number of people who can access the tool. But they allow automatic importing of data! It's really neat. I do think this is technically possible in Google Sheets (without macros). But then we'd still be without the very powerful automation tools which makes this kit so useful. I don't have the creativity or skill to make a tool like this without macros.

[Caphi]

Just taking the data from other pages without any macro would work perfectly.

[Caphi]

I found it thanks to google. I'm looking for something like this, has a lot of content and others, as the theme of the graphs and the theme of the books and others, but do not use macros, is very good application and would not need to go updating, only with the data they represent, such as the profit you generate, etc.. It is more or less what I am looking for. Something simple but effective. I think this tool without macros would also be perfect.

[Count]

No, unfortunately this works only in MS Excel due to a heavy reliance on VBA macros.

Also, how did you find this guide? I've unlisted it because I had to abandon the project before it finished. :(
And because I think using this requires a bit too much Excel experience (and perhaps bit too much technical work even for experienced users)

[Caphi]

" Set chkBox = ActiveSheet.CheckBoxes(Application.Caller) "

[Caphi]

This does not work in libreoffice, does it? because every time I mark something like for example the cities, the code opens saying that an error has occurred.

[Savven]

Thank you so much for this

[Count]

lol no. The description explains why. It's the first thing listed under the requirements.