The short answer
A supplier price list gets updated automatically by reading the file that arrives, converting the supplier's codes into yours, and writing the prices into the business software you already use, one by one, without anybody having to retype two thousand lines
The part that really counts, though, isn't the writing, it's the check before the writing, because a price that goes in wrong doesn't stay a records error, it comes out the next day inside an order, inside a quote, inside an invoice, and by then it's the customer who finds it
How you tackle it
Every supplier sends the price list his own way, one with the columns in one order, one with the headers written another way, one who slips a column into the middle from one month to the next without saying anything. And the codes are his, not yours, so somebody has to do the translation. Looking at two thousand lines with your own eyes isn't work a person holds up to twice in a row, so the check ends up being a spot check
The first thing you do is write a reading model for each supplier, which is less hard work than it sounds, because the format of a single supplier stays fairly constant over time
The columns are read from the header and not from the position, so if the supplier moves one the system doesn't even notice, and if instead a header it expected has gone, it stops and says so, instead of taking the column next door and writing the discount in place of the price, which is the classic way a home-made macro causes the disaster, and there's more on this in The file arrives every month with the columns moved
Then there's the code conversion, a table that holds the supplier's code and yours together, and the new codes that table doesn't know are not invented, they end up in a list you look at yourself
The check on how far the price has moved
Before writing, the system compares the new price with the one you have now, and if the difference goes over a threshold you decide, that line doesn't pass, it's set aside waiting for a human eye
The reason is a blunt one, a program has no idea that an item going from 1,20 to 12,00 is a comma lost along the way, to it they're two numbers and that's all. The threshold, on the other hand, notices. Below the threshold the lines go through all together, above it you find yourself looking at a handful of cases instead of two thousand, which is a different sort of day, and how these nets get built is covered in How you stop an automation from doing damage
A price list automation earns its keep when the files come often and are big, when there are more than two or three suppliers, and when the price you write in there is the same one your business software then uses on its own for orders and quotes, while if you get one short price list a year leave it as it is, you'll never win back the time it takes to write the rules
