Price Book Power!

Well, at least I'm told that they have power. As I said before, I've never been able to stick with doing one long enough to witness the power. It's always been a time-consuming task and I just haven't seen a quick enough payout for the time I was spending on the darn things, and they've always been abandoned.

So, here we go again. Trying the price book thing...

I spent a good part of a day over Spring Break, just looking up several different price books online. I looked at what people do, how they do it, why they do it. I looked at paper/ pencil Price Books vs. computer spreadsheet Price Books. In the end, I went with the computer spreadsheet method. What can I say? I love Excel! The ability to put in the information, tell it what to do with it (IE; make it do the math for me!), and then to have the ability to sort and manipulate that information... Well! It's just too much fun to pass up! So, armed with the information that I wanted to be able to track, I set up a spreadsheet with the information that I wanted. Here are the column headings that I used:

List: this column is used to mark items that I need to get for the week so that I can sort the information in my spreadsheet and get a condensed list of what I need at the store for a grocery list (hence the heading, "List")
Category: Produce, Meat, HBA, Dairy, etc. This helps by putting similar items together- for comparison and for easier shopping (all dairy is together on the list, all produce is together on the list, etc)
Item: This is for the generic name of the item (not name brand). For easier comparison, I put a broad item name, followed by specifics (ie; pork- boneless chops, pork- loin roast, etc) so that similar products can easily be compared.
Other: This is where I put any other information about the item (like a brand name)
Store: Since all of the stores that I might be shopping at in our area start with a different letter, I just enter the first letter of the store name here.
Date: I guess this is important if you want to know how often a product goes on sale. It can also be used to find the current prices if you enter info from the sales ads before shopping.
Amt: quantity
Unit: pounds, ounces, each, pack, etc.
Price(1): This is the total price of the product. (I didn't realize that I ended up having 2 columns with the heading of "Price" until I was all done and sorting things, so I may change one of these.)
Price(2): This is where I make the spreadsheet do the math for me by figuring out the unit price of the item. This column is technically the "price per unit" column, but the spreadsheet wouldn't do the math if I had text in there with the numbers, so I split it into 2 columns. Hence, the next header...
per unit: per pound, per ounce, each, per pack, etc.
Note: Here I note anything noteworthy (duh!). Some things I've noted so far are:
- if you have to use a loyalty card to get the sale price (I hate these!)
- if there is a requirement like BOGO (buy-one-get-one-free) or 5/$10, etc.
- if there is a limit to how many you can purchase of an item
- if I need a coupon for an item

Armed with the store ads from last week, I entered information. Then, came the ultimate test: using the sort feature. This has got to be one of the best things on Excel! And this is where the coolness of the price book lies. You can sort by 3 columns at a time. So, first, I sorted by "Category". This put all of the items in a department together (something that always irks me about my random, handwritten grocery lists because I end up wasting time traipsing back across the grocery store to pick up something that was in an aisle that I've already been through). Next, I sorted by "Item" and then I sorted by "Price (2)" (unit price). This let me compare the prices of the same or similar items to see what was the best deal. I suppose in the future, I will also have to sort by date, to get the most current prices together. Now comes the functionality of the price book. It turns into a shopping list right before your very eyes! I just went down the "List" column and marked what we needed ( I suppose you could use a letter "O" and that would give you a nice circle to check off for the grocery list). Then, go back to the sort feature and sort by "List". This will put all of the items that you need at the top of your list. Voila! You can print out this portion of the spreadsheet and have a shopping list! At this point, you can also look at the "Store" column of the sheet to see which store you should shop at (whatever appears the most in this column is the store that has the most good deals). Unless you have all the time in the world to hop from store to store, raking in only the best of the deals, but I never have the time, nor the inclination, to do that. By now, I'm sure this is all as clear as muddy water! But it is a system that makes sense to me. If I can figure out how, I'll try to post the actual spreadsheet that I came up with so that all you visual learners out there can see it. Or, if you're just dying to know, I can always email an attachment. In the meantime, trust me. It works and it's cool. Or it will be cool if I can keep up with it long enough to witness the power of the Price Book!