Guides

Practical answers to the spreadsheet problems that turn up every time a supplier sends a new price list. Each guide was checked against the vendor's own documentation on the date shown, and each links its sources.

• How to compare two supplier price lists in Excel

  XLOOKUP and VLOOKUP formulas for price changes, new and missing products, the three checks to run first, and what a lookup cannot see.

• How to keep leading zeros in product codes in Excel, CSV files and Google Sheets

  Why 00123 becomes 123, the Automatic Data Conversion setting, the Power Query import that always works, and the same steps for Google Sheets and LibreOffice.

• How to find duplicate product codes in a price list in Excel

  Highlighting, counting with COUNTIF, and why Remove Duplicates should come last.

• Why a supplier's CSV opens in one column, and how to fix it in Excel

  Semicolon separators, the Windows list separator, UTF-8 and accented characters, and the one-sheet limit of CSV.

• Margin vs markup: what a supplier cost increase does to your price

  The two fractions, the points-versus-percent trap, and the two honest ways to reprice after a cost increase.