Supplier price lists that arrive as documents and get typed into a quoting sheet
Quoting from a stale cost loses money on jobs you win.
A price increase that was never applied costs money quietly, on jobs that look like successes.
Not every business has this problem, and some should leave it alone.
Most of these can be done better. Whether it's worth doing is a separate question. What follows is one common form of the problem, described in general terms, because your version will differ. These are possible challenges, not a description of your business, and some should be left exactly as they are. If it sounds like your week, that's worth a conversation.
Watch: Money That Isn't Where the Total Says It Is
Watch: Quietly Losing Money on Jobs You Won
Sound familiar?
- A price increase notice sits unread for weeks before it's applied.
- Nobody knows which lines in the quoting sheet are current and which are two years old.
- A percentage increase got applied to the busy items and never the rest.
- Margins feel tighter than they should, and nobody can say exactly why.
What it looks like
A supplier sends updated pricing, as an attachment, a link, or a printed sheet. Somebody has to get the new numbers into whatever is used for quoting, often a spreadsheet built years ago. The frequently quoted items get updated; the rest wait, because a full pass takes a day nobody has.
What it costs
This is unusual in that it costs money on jobs that are won, not lost. A price that rose six weeks ago and was never updated means every quote using it is priced against a cost the business no longer pays. The quote wins, the work gets done, and the margin is smaller than anyone believes. The effect compounds: items priced too low win more often, so the stalest prices get used the most. At quarter end, the business has a set of jobs quoted on good margins and delivered on worse ones, and finding the cause means comparing every quoted cost against what was actually paid, the exact work nobody has time for.
Where it goes wrong
- Partial updates are invisible. A price updated last week looks identical to one untouched for two years.
- Markup is applied inconsistently, with no easy way to see which lines carry the intended margin.
- Percentage increases get applied selectively, usually to the busy items only.
- The sheet is a single point of failure, understood by one person on one machine.
What a better version looks like
Cost and price stop being typed together. What the supplier charges is held separately from what the business charges, with the rule connecting them written down. A new price list is then compared rather than retyped, and the useful output is a difference report: these went up, these went down, this one moved forty percent and is worth a look. Age becomes visible too, so quoting against an unconfirmed price is a decision rather than an accident.
Questions worth asking about your own operation
- Which prices in your quoting sheet were last confirmed more than a year ago?
- When a supplier raises prices, how does that reach every quote that uses the item?
- Which job type wins most easily, and why?
If this sounds familiar
Bring me the version you actually have. I'll learn how the process really works before I suggest anything. If it isn't worth changing, or isn't a fit for me, I'll say so. Talk through a problem