A new supplier price sheet checked against your price list
Every price change, discontinued and new item on a supplier’s price sheet matched to your price list, margin problems flagged. For NE Arkansas trades.
Demonstration using synthetic data
Every record, name, address, and log entry on this page is invented for the demonstration. No client, client system, or production record is involved, and no business result is claimed.
- Author
- Tanner Rusher
- Published
- Written for
- Trades and service businesses
Who this is for
Plumbing, heating and air and electrical contractors, and the supply houses that serve them, in Jonesboro and Northeast Arkansas. If you resell parts at a markup and your suppliers send a new price sheet a few times a year, this is the afternoon (or the week) that sheet costs you.
The problem, in your words
The new sheet never comes in the same layout as the last one. Columns move. Item numbers are written with dashes this time and without them last time. Descriptions get reworded, and an item you sold each is now sold by the box of ten. Somebody lines it all up with your list by hand, or the old prices stay in and the margin slips away without anyone noticing.
What happens, step by step
- Your supplier’s new sheet comes in as whatever file they send.
- Each line is paired with the matching item on your current price list, even when the item number or description is written differently.
- The changes are sorted into price increases, decreases, discontinued items and new items.
- Unit changes, such as each versus a box of ten, are caught before they skew a price.
- Every item whose new cost would put it below your target margin is flagged.
- Close calls, a similar description under a different item number, are set aside for a person.
What you approve
Your selling prices stay yours. The run never changes what you charge: each margin flag waits for you to set the price, and each close call waits for you to say whether it is the same item.
What the example run showed
The video is a real run on fictional data: a made-up plumbing and heating supply house receiving a 2,398-line price sheet in a new layout. The run matched 2,160 items to the current list, with no wrong or missed matches against an answer key, and found 1,086 increases, 282 decreases, 59 discontinued items and 157 new ones. It flagged 347 items whose new cost would land below the target margin and set aside 81 close calls for a person. Those numbers come from that one invented sheet.
Setting it up in your business
This is business automation that works with the price list you keep today, whether that is a spreadsheet or the system you bill from. It starts with a 20-minute call about where your price sheets come from and how you update prices now. If it fits, a Workflow Review maps the job, and an Automation Pilot builds it around your suppliers and your margins. I’m in Jonesboro and can come by.