Suppliers typically email price list files to their clients, post them on their websites, in their personal accounts, or host them in the cloud. How can you create a price list that's easy for people to use and also supports automated processing?
Ideally, the file name should answer the question "what's inside the file".
| The most compatible option is when the file name consists of Latin letters, without spaces, without diacritics (ç ñ á), does not contain variable elements (for example, a date) and is the same every time. | apex_pricelist.xlsx |
| Adding a date is informative and does not significantly impair the ability of automatic processing. | apex_price_2023.05.24.xlsx |
| You can add information that there are discounts on the Foax brand inside; the parser can at least latch onto the beginning and end of the file name to distinguish it from other files coming from the same email (or located in the same folder on the server).. | apex_price_FOAX_special.xlsx |
| The worst case scenario is when the name changes arbitrarily each time. Even if the internal structure hasn't changed, the parser can't immediately recognize that it's the same file, just named differently. | apex_price_june.xlsx product prices.xls apex_wholesale.xlsx |
It is better if the file name does not contain spaces.
1. It's best approach when each product attribute is listed in a separate column. At a minimum, this includes: brand, SKU, price, and product name. Sometimes the brand name is a subheading, followed by products related to that brand. Sometimes, product information is spread across two or more lines. These situations are solvable, but the reliability of automatic processing is slightly reduced (and the complexity of setup also increases).
2. Columns must have headers. Then the parser can reliably detect whether a column has been added or removed in the next file.
3. If possible, place all product offerings on a single sheet. Sometimes, a separate sheet is created for each brand, for example, resulting in 20-30 sheets in the file. For automatic processing, each sheet must be configured separately, which increases the complexity of setup and the likelihood of errors. If there are only a few products (about 5 on a single sheet), it may make sense to separate the brands into sheets so that a human user can find the desired product with a single click. However, when this method creates so many sheets that the list exceeds the width of the screen, this becomes a real problem. For a human user, a reasonable alternative is to enable a filter and just as quickly find a product on a single sheet, and likely even faster than searching through sheets. Another good practice is to collect all offers as a list on a separate sheet, and leave detailed offers with descriptions and photos on other sheets.
Pricedata has a solution for all of the situations mentioned (and many others). However, following these recommendations will significantly improve the automated processing of your price lists.