What actually belongs on a wholesale price list

Most distributors already have a price list. It is usually a spreadsheet, and it usually has two columns: the item, and a number. That is enough to answer "magkano?", but it is not enough to stop the question being asked again next week.

A price list earns its keep when it settles things. That is a taller order in wholesale in the Philippines than it sounds, because the same item goes out to a supermarket, a hardware store, and a sari-sari store at three different prices. Here is what has to be on the list for it to hold.

The item, named the way your buyer says it

Not the way your supplier prints it on the box. If your buyers ask for "marine plywood, half inch", that is what the line should say, even if the invoice from your supplier calls it something longer and duller.

This sounds trivial. It is the difference between a buyer scanning a list and finding what she wants, and a buyer giving up and calling you to ask.

The unit, spelled out

"Cement, ₱265" tells a buyer nothing. Per bag? Per pallet? Per truckload?

Write the unit every time: per bag, per case of 24, per sako, per sheet, per kilo. Where a product sells in more than one unit, that is two lines, not one line with a note. Every ambiguity in a unit becomes an argument at the tailgate when the van pulls up, and you will lose those arguments more often than you win them.

A price that is actually current

The most expensive thing on a price list is an old number. A buyer who orders at last quarter's price and then sees this quarter's price on the invoice will pay it once, grudgingly, and remember it on every collection day after that.

If you cannot keep every line current, keep fewer lines. A short list you trust beats a long one you have to check before quoting.

Which buyer this list is for

Here is where the spreadsheet approach starts to fall over. You do not have one price list. You have several, whether or not you have written them down: the supermarket price, the price for a suki whose delivery you have made every Tuesday for six years, the new-buyer price, and the price you gave one canteen three years ago and never revisited.

If a list does not say who it is for, then in practice it is a list of what you charge most people, and every real quote becomes a judgement call made from memory. That is the moment pricing stops being a record and starts being a recollection.

When it takes effect

A price list without a date is a rumour. Put the effective date on it. When you raise prices, the date is what lets you say, plainly and without a row, that the order placed last Tuesday was at the old price and the one placed today is not. That is worth most in the weeks when everybody is stocking up at once and nobody is in the mood for a long conversation about it.

What is not on it

Two things worth leaving off.

Your cost. Obvious, but worth saying because it is the most common accident when a spreadsheet gets forwarded into a Viber thread. If a cost column exists anywhere in the file, sooner or later that file reaches a buyer.

Everything you do not sell to that buyer. A store owner scanning 400 lines on her phone to find the 30 she actually orders is a buyer who will message you instead. Give each buyer their list, not your master list.

Where goodport fits

This is more or less the whole reason goodport exists. Products carry a default selling price, so nothing is ever unpriced. A price list is a named set of agreed prices you attach to the buyers it covers, and a single buyer can have a personal override on top where you have negotiated one.

Your buyer opens their own portal and sees their own prices, on their own items, with the units written out. No file to send, no version to keep straight, and no "how much for me?" at nine on a Sunday night.

If you want to see it on your own numbers, book a demo and bring a product list. We will set it up together on the call.