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I have been assigned the task of automating entering of supplier prices and inventory based on our master google sheet.

I have limited programming knowledge, but so far I have made code that can create an order sheet and send it via E-mail.

The problem I'm facing now is that the prices are based on pdf/xlsx files we receive from our suppliers, and each file has its own way of naming the same item, not to mention the format.

Right now I'm having to manually convert pdf tables to excel, then copy the data into a google sheet, then run a code I made for each supplier that searches and copy the price to the proper location on our spreadsheet. It's definitely not optimal but still a lot quicker than hand typing them in.

Is there a better way to update the prices?

Revali Senai
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    Yes: do not do this by yourself, find someone with a lower salary than yours for doing the clean-up. Seriously. – Doc Brown Oct 27 '15 at 06:47
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    From a programing viewpoint, the problem domain isn't well enough specified to be able to answer, nor is there a design with a problem that can be solved. The "Is there a better way to update the prices?" can lead to far too many possible answers (though yes, Doc has the one I would agree with noting that its really not a programming problem at this time). –  Oct 28 '15 at 13:58

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First, I would try to ask your suppliers if they are able to send you the data in a standardized, machine-readable format. An Excel sheet may be fine as long as you can identify the columns correctly. There are dozens of ways to automate the reading of data from Excel sheets, so that should be a good starting point for automatization. Note that your suppliers will most probably generate their price table PDFs from a spreadsheet document by themselves, so I guess most of them could you send the data in a better format if they just want to.

If your suppliers do not cooperate and insist on sending you PDFs , someone has to do the hard work and convert the PDFs into a spreadsheet (again). OCR software might be of use here, but that still will be a semi-automatic process.

Doc Brown
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  • +1 for Ask your suppliers for a different format. They had to produce the PDF from something (probably their stock system). – Jaydee Oct 27 '15 at 10:57
  • Thanks for the answer. I was hoping there may be a way to program my way around it. I will have to have my boss try to convince the suppliers to at least provide the proper files and hope that they will comply. – Revali Senai Oct 27 '15 at 16:22