Catalogue hygiene before you speed up quoting

If you are looking at faster quoting, sooner or later you come back to the catalogue. A quote can only be as good as the product file behind it. If two products share a code, if some cable is sold per metre and some per drum with no unit written down, or if last spring's prices are still sitting in the file, then every quote prepared from that file starts from the wrong place, whoever prepares it.

The good news is that catalogue hygiene can start small. A handful of checks on an export is a sensible place to begin.

Start from an export, not the screen

Looking at products one at a time in your merchant system hides the patterns. Export the catalogue and the price list as a spreadsheet, CSV or Excel, and work on the file. You can sort, filter and count in a way the product screen never allows. Keep the original export untouched as a reference and make your notes in a copy.

Check 1: one code, one product

Sort by product code and look for duplicates. Two products under one code is the most damaging error a catalogue can have, because whichever one a quote picks, it might be the wrong one. The reverse problem, one product under two codes, is less dangerous but splits prices and stock across two records. Make a list of both kinds and decide, for each, which record survives.

Check 2: every product has a unit

Filter for blank units. Then look at the units you do have and list them: each, pack, box, metre, length, coil, bag, pallet, sheet. You will usually find the same unit written several ways. Agree one spelling for each and fix the fast movers first, the products that turn up on quote after quote.

Units matter more than people expect. A customer asks for 100 metres of cable, and your catalogue sells it in 50 metre coils. If the unit is missing, the quote either says 100 coils or leaves someone to work it out. Neither is good.

Check 3: every price has dates, and none have run out

Look at the price columns. Do prices carry a valid-from and a valid-until date? If they do, filter for the ones that have already ended. An expired price that is still being quoted is a silent error: the customer is happy, the margin is not. If your prices have no dates at all, start by adding end dates to special prices. They are the ones that cause arguments.

Check 4: one price per customer and product

For customer-specific and group prices, check that each customer has only one live price for each product. Two live prices for the same pair is a tie, and nobody at the counter can know which one the account owner meant. Close the older agreement and keep the one that was meant.

Check 5: write down the trade names

This one is not in the export, which is exactly why it gets missed. Your customers do not write your catalogue descriptions. They write "4x2", "twin and earth", "15 mil copper", "rocker switch". Ask the people on your counter which words regular customers use and which products they mean, and write them down next to the product codes.

That list is worth keeping. It writes down knowledge that otherwise lives only in the heads of your most experienced staff, so a new starter can use it too.

Check 6: keep the descriptions plain

Long descriptions stuffed with marketing words make products harder to find, not easier. A good description names the product type, the size, the material or rating, and the pack. If a description cannot be read aloud at the counter in one breath, it is probably doing too much.

What a clean catalogue makes possible

With these checks done, quoting becomes a matter of matching words to products and applying prices in a fixed order. That is the part I built QuoteClerk AI to draft. Your catalogue, customers and prices are loaded as XLSX, CSV or TSV files. A line that carries one of your own product codes is matched directly. A line written in words gets up to 5 ranked candidates from your catalogue, and a person picks the right one. A trade name matches only if it is in your catalogue data, for example as an alias, which is why the trade name list from check 5 matters so much.

For more on column names and catalogue matching, read trade names and catalogue matching.

Do the checks once, then keep them up

None of these checks is hard. The trick is to repeat them. Run the duplicate code and blank unit checks each month, review special prices before their end dates, and add new trade names as you hear them at the counter. A catalogue kept like that is easier to quote from, whoever prepares the quote.