Creating a Price Book

This article appears in the 176th Carnival of Debt Reduction at Rocket Finance. If you came from the carnival - welcome! I hope you will consider subscribing via RSS feed or e-mail.

Green Panda Treehouse recently sent out a Tweet about an article she was thinking about writing on price books. We decided it would be fun to do concurrent, collaborative posts on this topic. Go read her article, which is a broader overview on the subject and, while you are there, subscribe to her blog. Then come back here and see how I created mine!

I use a combination of two or three technologies to keep my price book accessible and portable. With a background in network administration, I admit I’m a bit of a technology geek. If the techie approach to keeping a price book doesn’t appeal to you, there are many low tech ways to do it including simply writing the information down in a small notebook. My way is fun and you might like to try it out.

I took advantage of Google Docs online to create my price book. If you have a gmail account, you have access to Google Docs. You can easily set up a gmail account for free if you don’t have one by going to the gmail account setup page. Once your account is created and you have logged in, in the upper left corner you will see a link for documents –



Click on that link to get to the document creation page. Then click on “new” and “spreadsheet”.


Type your column headers across the top in row 1. I used Item, Cost, Store and then several Date columns. Use whatever makes sense for you.



Name your spreadsheet and save it. The next step is to type in your prices. The best way to do this is to type them in from your grocery store receipts. Figuring out the abbreviations on your grocery receipts can be tricky so I try to do this pretty quickly after I get home from the store.



Once you get your items input you can arrange them alphabetically by clicking on the first column (A), to highlight it, and then clicking on “Tools” and then “Sort by column A, A to Z”. I type all my items in when I get back from the store and then re-sort them when I’m finished so my price book is always in alphabetical order. It’s important that you are very specific with your descriptions so that you are comparing the costs accurately. In other words, it won’t do you much good if you write the total price you paid for a bunch of bananas. You need to know the price per lb. you paid for bananas. The price you paid for a can of garbanzo beans is only helpful to you if you know the size of that can. You also need to know brand names. Include whatever information you need in order to make a true comparison. There are a lot of options you can use when creating a spreadsheet but this basic, simple one works perfectly for this application.

The other part of the equation is the portability of the system. If need be, you can click on “File” and “Print”. Print out your price book and take it with you. If you have an internet enabled phone, the real beauty of the online price book becomes clear. I have a client provided iPhone and access my price book in the store right on my phone! It’s great. I call it up when I get to the store and have it displayed while I go up and down the aisles. It scrolls easily and, if need be, I can add to it right from my phone.

A price book is an invaluable tool for building a more frugal household. Whether you use my approach or someone else’s, add a price book to your toolkit and get your grocery budget under control!

Do you already have a price book? What is yours like? Do you keep it up-to-date?