Task guide · price lists

Convert a supplier price list PDF to Excel

Extract product codes, descriptions, pack sizes and prices into a spreadsheet that can be filtered, compared and prepared for import.

Supplier price lists are good extraction candidates when they were exported digitally and use repeated columns. They can also hide critical context—currency, tax treatment, effective date and price tier—outside the table. Capture that context before working with the numbers.

Step-by-step workflow

1. Confirm the PDF has selectable text and note its effective date, currency and price tier.
2. Load only the product-table pages and combine them when the column structure repeats.
3. Tune spacing so SKU, description, pack size, unit and price remain separate.
4. Preserve leading zeros in SKU fields and edit wrapped product descriptions.
5. Export XLSX for comparison work or CSV for a controlled catalogue import.

Protect product codes

SKUs and barcodes are identifiers, not quantities. Set their spreadsheet columns to text before editing so leading zeros and long digit strings are preserved.

Separate unit and pack prices

A list may show carton price, unit price and minimum order quantity close together. Give each its own clearly named column and calculate a test unit cost to confirm the extraction has not shifted values.

Compare two price lists

Add supplier and effective-date columns to each extract, then append both tables. Match on a stable SKU rather than description text, because punctuation and product wording often change between editions.

Questions