Price Book

I am sharing my Price Book. This was a whole lot of work and it’s really hard to find a working price book online, so I’m sharing my efforts. If you don’t know what it is, it lists common prices for groceries. This allows you to create a list and budget, and stick to it. People waste 20% of what they spend in the grocery store on impulse buys. Make a good list and it’s easier to stick to it, thus saving boat loads of money.

To use as a grocery list:

First I would save the price book as grocery list. I make my price changes in my price book file and then resave as grocery list, then do my list for my monthly shopping.

In the first column enter “a” for a check mark, indicating items you need. Enter your quantity in column J.

Enter “s” for a question mark, this is usually the stuff I want/need but don’t have money for yet. If you need ink for the printer but have to wait until the end of the month, enter a question mark for now so you don’t forget it later. Don’t enter anything in the quantity column and these won’t be calculated in your total yet.

Once you have your items marked go to the end of the book (Ctrl + End). Select the last cell of the row above the last (totals) row. Hold Shift down and hit Ctrl + Home. Go to Data > Sort… Sort by Column A, then Aisles, then Item. Select the rows that do not have anything in Column A. Right-click over the row numbers and select Hide (you can Unhide after you’ve printed).

Your price book is now ready to print for your trip to the store.

Notes:

You can start making this your own by pulling out old receipts. This will tell you what you already buy and need prices for. Enter that in the book. You can also collect sales flyers from your store to get more accurate prices (a pain in the butt to start but it pays off).

Keep in mind many of these prices are from flyers and will be lower than normal.

For some items I needed them for a recipe and guessed an even dollar amount, but was naughty and didn’t enter the actual price once I bought it.

Get an Aisle Directory from your favorite store and renumber items so they’re in order when you get to the store. This is totally worth the effort as you breeze through the monthly shopping.

Keep in mind that units are different for different items. Some are per lb, some per ounce, some per bunch…

In order to know if an item is really a deal you need to know the PPU, the Price Per Unit. You can enter the size of the item and cost and this book will calculate the PPU for you. You can also sort the book by PPU to see what will get you the most bang for your buck (like, say, oatmeal).

If you want to really stock up on deals you need to print out the entire book and bring it with you when you go shopping (I keep mine in a 3-ring binder, including the other sheets of the book). Bring a calculator so you can do the math on “sale” items. They aren’t always the deal they say they are. Also this helps at the bulk store, some of that stuff isn’t actually cheaper. But some is a fantastic deal, like, say, spaghetti sauce.

I calculate my Monthly Needs on another sheet so I will have them to refer to. This is a bit of work but really helps to keep track of where the money goes. And I need to quit drinking coffee.

If you click on a cell in the Stores column you can right-click and use Pick From Drop-Down List. This refers to the Stores sheet, which you can edit to fit your stores.

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