ProductCatalogs.ai

Large files

Reviewing a Large Supplier Price File

Nobody is going to read three thousand rows of a spreadsheet line by line, and they shouldn't have to. The rows that matter are the ones that changed, and of those, the ones that changed in a way that could hurt you. Everything else can move through untouched.

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Why this matters

A file this size makes two mistakes equally easy: rubber-stamping the whole thing because reading it isn't realistic, or spending hours scanning line by line and still missing the one row that mattered because it looked like all the others.

A safer process

Turn the update into a clear decision.

  1. 1Compare the new file against your current catalog first, so you're only looking at what actually changed, not the whole file.
  2. 2Separate changes by kind — price, cost, removal, new product — instead of reading them in whatever order the supplier's rows happen to be in.
  3. 3Apply the same rules every time: a margin threshold, a price-jump percentage, anything below cost.
  4. 4Let everything that passes those rules move through without a manual look.
  5. 5Spend the actual review time only on what got flagged — that's usually a small fraction of the file.

Review checklist

Before you approve.

  • The review starts from a diff against the current catalog, not the raw file.
  • Rules for flagging are written down and applied consistently, not decided row by row.
  • The number of rows needing a human decision is far smaller than the total row count.
  • Nothing below cost or outside your price-jump threshold can pass through unflagged.
  • The full file is still kept, in case a rule needs adjusting later.

Frequently asked questions

Isn't skipping most rows risky?

Skipping rows nobody looked at is risky. Skipping rows that a consistent rule already checked isn't — that's the same conclusion a careful manual reviewer would eventually reach, done automatically and the same way every time.

What's a reasonable number of rows to actually review by hand?

There's no fixed number — it depends on the file — but if a 2,000-row update is regularly producing hundreds of flagged rows, the rules are probably too sensitive, not the file too risky.

Check your own supplier file before anything changes.

Start with one CSV or Excel file. ProductCatalogs.ai shows the risky changes and keeps the current catalog protected until you approve.

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