What is a furniture price book?

A fresh price book arrives, and the old binder suddenly looks more dangerous than its cracked spine suggests. A furniture price book is the vendor’s pricing reference: models, sizes, fabric grades, option charges, and the terms that explain how to use those figures.

Treat each edition as a dated source. The job is to turn it into prices your team can quote confidently, while preserving the distinction between what the store pays and what the customer pays. A beautiful catalog image cannot settle either number.

What does a price book contain?

A useful price book connects the furniture specification to its price basis. It may arrive as a PDF, spreadsheet, dealer-portal download, or structured data feed. The information can also be divided across a frame book, a textile grading list, and separate terms.

Look for the model and size first, then the selected fabric grade. Read the notes for finish charges, cushion changes, COM arrangements, freight, surcharges, and effective dates. The product template you build from that material should reflect those distinctions.

A dated library helps identify which edition a price came from. One manufacturer’s price-book library includes June 2025 and May 2024 editions. That is an example of versioned source material, not an industry-wide update calendar.

What is dealer cost versus suggested retail?

Dealer cost is the store’s purchase price under its vendor agreement. Suggested retail is a proposed customer selling price. A book might show list prices that require a dealer discount calculation, net dealer prices, suggested retail prices, or more than one basis. Read the heading and the agreement before copying a column.

Minimum advertised price, where a vendor supplies such a policy, concerns advertised pricing. Keep it separate from the cost calculation and review the actual policy. A column labeled “list” should never silently become “cost” because it was the easiest column to import.

Consider this illustrative order:

The leg charge is stated as net cost here, so it does not receive the list-price discount again. The example produces no customer selling price until the store applies its retail pricing decision. That is why the basis of every charge matters as much as the number.

How do grades, COM, and option charges fit together?

Fabric grades usually point to different prices for the same frame. Depending on the book, the grade column may already contain the complete upholstered price. Adding a second fabric charge would then count upholstery twice.

COM, or customer’s own material, has its own pricing and requirements. A COM figure does not mean the store receives free fabric; establish who buys the material, who ships it, and which handling or production charges apply. Keep the maker’s instructions beside that price.

For a repeatable catalog, separate the frame, its grade-dependent pricing, and genuine extra charges. The graded-in pricing explanation shows how those relationships work without turning every fabric into an unrelated product.

How often do price books change?

Vendors set their own schedules. A new edition, correction sheet, surcharge notice, or discontinued fabric can matter between full releases. Give someone responsibility for receiving those notices and recording what changed.

Keep a short vendor log: source filename, effective date, date received, changes made, and who reviewed them. Archive the prior edition rather than leaving it beside the current one without a label. The binder has earned retirement; it need not keep answering showroom questions.

When a new edition arrives, compare representative configurations and exceptions before releasing the update to the floor. Include a basic grade, an upgraded cover, COM, and a charged option where the vendor offers them.

Can you ask for a spreadsheet?

Yes. Ask the vendor for a dealer-authorized spreadsheet or export, including stable model and option identifiers, the price basis, and effective dates. If only a PDF is available, the extracted data still needs review against the source.

A catalog feed can serve a different purpose from a dealer price book. Ask what its fields actually contain instead of assuming product images and dimensions include your negotiated costs. For structured exchanges, start with what EDI 832 carries.

How OrderPilot turns the book into a quoting catalog

OrderPilot imports product templates, options, values, prices, and costs from a prepared CSV. Shared choices can be reused, with template-specific values or pricing where a frame requires them. The import is checked before the changes are applied. Use stable handles when preparing the next edition, then review the update report. Changing template prices affects new configurations; existing saved quotes retain their stored prices. Staff can keep the agreed quote intact while maintaining the catalog used for the next sale.

The next step is loading a vendor catalog from one spreadsheet, with the source book open beside the import review.

Sources

1. Price lists and effective-date archive — Indiana Furniture; includes June 2025 and May 2024 editions.