Compare supplier price lists and see what changed

Why compare supplier price lists?

Suppliers send updated price lists as spreadsheets, and the changes are rarely marked. A handful of increases can be buried among hundreds of unchanged rows, alongside items that were added or dropped entirely. Comparing the old and new list by hand is slow and easy to get wrong, and a missed increase quietly erodes margin on every unit you sell until someone notices.

A structured comparison makes the delta explicit: what changed, by how much, and what it does to your numbers.

What CostRift surfaces

Every row in the comparison is classified. These are the categories CostRift uses:

Increased

An item that exists in both lists and whose cost went up, with the absolute and percentage change.

Decreased

An item present in both lists whose cost went down, again with the absolute and percentage change.

Unchanged

An item matched in both lists with the same cost.

New

An item in the current list with no match in the previous one.

Removed

An item in the previous list with no match in the current one.

Needs review

Rows that could not be paired cleanly — for example duplicate or ambiguous SKUs — are left unresolved instead of guessed.

Incompatible

Matched rows that cannot be compared directly, such as a currency or unit-of-measure mismatch between the two lists.

How supplier price list comparison works

1. Add your previous and current price lists from the same supplier as CSV or XLSX files.
2. Map the SKU and cost columns for each list. Map selling price too if you want margin impact; the two files are mapped independently, so the columns can be named differently in each.
3. Run the comparison. CostRift matches items by SKU and classifies every row.
4. Review the changes, deltas, and margin impact, and filter the results by change type.
5. Export the filtered results to CSV, or save the comparison to history when you are signed in.

Items are matched by SKU: first exactly as written in each list, then with a normalization that trims outer whitespace and ignores ASCII letter case (so sku-123 and SKU-123 match). When a clean match is not possible — duplicate or ambiguous SKUs, for instance — the rows are left as needs review rather than paired arbitrarily.

Prefer to work through the method yourself first? The step-by-step guide to comparing two supplier price lists walks through each stage, including how to do it in a spreadsheet.

What you can compare

• Upload or import a CSV or XLSX price list — such as the file a supplier emails you or you download from a supplier portal — for both the previous and current version.
• A previous and a current list from the same supplier. Comparing unrelated supplier catalogs can produce misleading matches, because SKUs and product definitions differ.
• SKU and cost columns at a minimum. Selling prices are optional and unlock margin impact.

If a supplier's file arrives with shifted headers, extra sheets, or inconsistent SKU formatting, importing a supplier price list covers getting it into clean, comparable shape first.

In a spreadsheet, or with a dedicated tool

A spreadsheet works well for an occasional supplier price list comparison — or a vendor price list comparison you run once or twice a year. The usual approach is to put the previous and current list side by side, match rows by SKU or item code, add a column for the absolute cost change and another for the percentage change, and then isolate the rows that are new, removed, or did not match so none of them are lost off the bottom of a filter.

When the same comparison comes round every quarter — a new list from the same supplier or vendor, checked against the one you have been buying against — the repeated set-up and the manual sorting into changed, new, and removed items are where time goes and where a missed increase slips through. That is the point at which dedicated supplier price comparison software earns its place: every row is classified the same way each time (increased, decreased, unchanged, new, removed, needs review, incompatible), the absolute and percentage change is computed on every matched line, and the rows that did not match cleanly are put in front of you rather than left for you to spot.

CostRift is that dedicated tool for the previous-versus-current case. It takes one supplier's old and new price lists and shows exactly what changed between them, with the margin impact once you add selling prices. Your CSV and XLSX files are read in your browser and are not sent to CostRift servers to run the comparison. Sourcing the same items from several suppliers and finding out who is cheapest is a different question — see comparing supplier quotes.

If you want to do it that way, the guide to comparing two supplier price lists in Excel walks through the lookups, the change columns, and isolating the new and removed rows step by step.

From price change to margin impact

Comparing costs alone works with just SKU and cost columns. If you also map your selling prices, each increased or decreased item shows how the cost change moves your gross margin and the selling price that would preserve the margin you had before. CostRift does not change any prices for you and does not give financial advice — it shows the numbers so you can decide.

For the reasoning behind a single price change, see what a supplier price increase does to your margin and the margin impact calculator for one item.

Save a comparison when you are signed in

Comparing price lists needs no account. If you sign in, Save to History is available as an explicit step: it stores the structured, canonical rows of a comparison so you can come back to it later and browse your saved comparisons by supplier and snapshot. Saving is always a deliberate action, never automatic.

On a Business workspace, saved comparisons and supplier history are shared with your whole team instead of staying with one person — see CostRift for purchasing teams.

Your raw files stay in your browser

CostRift reads and compares your CSV and XLSX files in your browser. The raw files are not sent to CostRift servers to run the comparison. When you are signed in and choose Save to History, the structured rows of that comparison — not the original files — are persisted to your account. The Privacy Policy describes this in full.

Frequently asked questions