A digital product passport is not something you prepare once and then leave alone. As soon as a piece of furniture changes - a new color scheme, a different component, an adjusted material - the information in the passport must also be accurate. What maintaining it costs depends mainly on how often your assortment changes, how many variants you carry, and whether the data already comes from your own systems or is still entered manually.
There is no established rate yet for that maintenance, and no mandatory format per furniture product group either; the delegated act with the precise requirements is still to be published, expected around 2028. What is established as a principle in the regulation: the passport should show the current state of the product, not only the state on the day it entered the market. The costs are therefore not in a single item at the start, but recur as soon as something changes in the product.
Preparation and maintenance are two separate cost items
For the costs of the first passport per product, rules of thumb already exist based on the number of products and data availability; these are explored per subject in the knowledge base. Maintenance is a different matter: what counts there is not the number of products that ever received a passport, but the number of changes per year. A manufacturer with a fixed assortment of ten models that rarely change has different maintenance costs than an importer that introduces new colors and fabrics every season.
Where the amount comes from
Three factors determine most of the maintenance costs in practice. First, the number of variants: every color, size or material combination that is sold separately requires its own passport in principle. Second, the frequency of changes: a supplier switch, a different adhesive or an adjusted fitting can mean that the underlying data needs to be adjusted. Third, the extent to which your product data is already structured. If specifications, materials and origin are already in a central system, a change is often a matter of updating. If they are scattered across quotes, emails and an employee's memory, each adjustment requires more research.
What a provider takes over for you
Some of that work can be delegated to the party hosting the passport. furnipas.eu compiles the passport on the basis of the data you provide, hosts it for ten years and supplies the QR data carrier that refers to that information. Changes to an existing product then go through an update of the supplied data, rather than through a new passport from scratch. How that supply and hosting work in detail, you can read on the page that shows that process step by step. How much that saves in time and money differs per company and depends on how your current product administration is organized.
What you can limit yourself
The largest cost item in maintenance is usually not the passport itself, but the re-collection of data that is actually already present somewhere in the company. One fixed place where product data is kept up to date - a PIM system, an ERP module or at worst a well-managed spreadsheet - saves research work with every change. It also helps to establish in advance who within the company is responsible for notifying the party managing the passport of changes, so that an adjustment does not remain pending until someone happens to think of it.
Where you can inquire about this in concrete terms
To get an estimate that aligns with your own assortment and systems, it is advisable to discuss with your software supplier how data is exchanged, and with the party hosting the product passport what a change will cost in practice. You will find an overview of what is and is not included in a subscription in the subscriptions overview. For questions about the legal obligation itself - which specific changes must be made and within what timeframe - the official text of the regulation and, in case of doubt about your own situation, a lawyer or the competent supervisory authority is the right way to go.
Would you like to see first how this applies to your own assortment before you start comparing costs? With a few questions that immediately provide an indication you get a free insight into where you stand.