Supplier price updates: keep costs and prices current

Key takeaways

Supplier price updates are the routine of loading new cost prices into your systems when suppliers change them, checking invoices against agreed prices, and flagging where your own selling prices or quotes need reviewing. Missed updates quietly erode margin. The loading and checking are repetitive; the pricing decision is not.

• Load supplier price files as they arrive, not quarterly.
• Check invoices against the agreed price list.
• Flag products whose margin falls below target.
• Selling price decisions stay with you.

Why do supplier price updates get missed?

They get missed because they arrive in different formats, at different times, often as an email attachment to one person. Each file needs mapping to your product codes, and there is rarely time to do it the day it arrives. Meanwhile quotes and online prices use old costs, and invoices at new prices are paid without a check.

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What does the routine involve?

Collect price files from a shared inbox, map them to your product codes, load the new costs with their effective dates, and run a margin check. Products below your target margin go to the person who sets prices. Invoices are checked against the current agreed price, and differences are queried with the supplier.

• Collect files from one shared inbox.
• Map supplier codes to your product codes.
• Load costs with effective dates.
• Run a margin check and flag exceptions.
• Query invoices that do not match.

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What do missed updates cost?

In an illustrative example, a wholesaler misses a 6% increase on 200 products for three months, on £30,000 a month of sales at those costs. That is about £5,400 of margin lost before anyone notices. These are example figures. A routine that loads files within days of arrival closes that gap.

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When should you keep this in-house?

Keep it in-house when prices are negotiated deal by deal rather than published in files, or when you have only a few suppliers with rare changes. The decision to change your own prices, absorb a rise or switch supplier should always stay with you.

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What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see: a business discovers at year-end that margins fell on its best-selling lines because cost increases were never loaded. A weekly price file routine turns that into a monthly exception list.

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Price update checklist

Set up the routine with these points.

• One inbox for supplier price files.
• A code mapping for each supplier.
• Files loaded within three working days.
• Margin check after every load.
• Invoice prices checked against agreed prices.

• Supplier statement reconciliation: catch missing invoices

Next step

Send us how supplier price changes reach your systems today. We will suggest a routine and say plainly which parts a managed team could run.