Category Archives: Price Book

Have you ever gone shopping and wanted to buy something and thought to yourself “I think that item is cheaper at another store” but wasn’t quite sure?  I have decided to start keeping a Price Book.  The Price Book is a way to track prices and sale frequency by product and store.  Especially on products that you use most often.  Saving you money and time.  My price book is a simple little spiral notebook that I carry in my coupon binder.  I list all my most used products (one per page) by the date, store, brand, size, price and unit price for that product.  Breaking the price down per unit, is especially helpful if you do a lot of wholesale shopping at stores like Sam’s Club or Costco.  After doing this for some time you will be able to track: best regular prices, special sales and track sale cycles of  products.   Allowing you to stock up for your family needs, saving time and money.   The price book will help you find surprising deals and sticker shock on those items that you have been purchasing the old way.

Price Book Example

To create you own Price Book Follow these few simple steps below:

Step 1: Notebook/Binder

Create your product pages,  you will need to list the product, date, store, brand, size and unit price for that product.
Also create your own Abbreviation for the store and brands, etc… whatever works best for  you.

Step 2: Gather your information

You can use old itemized grocery receipts, store ads and online resources.
When gathering info in the store, check the tag it will usually list the unit price, if not take the cost of the item divided by the number of units, (ex: Baby Food   .50 for 4oz jar you would divide 50/4 = 0.125 per oz.)

Always have a calculator on hand to calculate the price per unit, if not listed on shelf tag.

Step 3:  Record your entries

Start building your price book by recording your initial price findings. In the beginning you will be making quite a  few entries, but as time goes on, your entries will slow. Your price book will allow you to Track sale cycles for products.

Only enter a new price if it is lower than the previous price you have listed for that brand or store.