Guide · price lists
How to prepare a price list for AI quoting
Short answer: Give every sellable item one row with SKU, unit, price and an effective date; the draft cites that row and date on every priced line.
An AI quote draft is only as good as the row it points to. Most price lists were built for a person who already knows the exceptions, so units hide in headers and dates go missing. Staffbox cites the price-list row and the list's date on every priced line, so the list has to be one a stranger could cite. Send up to three requests your team already answered; drafts come back within 2 business days.
Updated 14 October 2026
One row per item, one price per row, and a date on every row
One row per sellable item. One price per row. Every row answers the same questions in the same columns. Here is an example for a fictional cabinet shop. The prices are invented for this page.
sku,description,unit,price,min_qty,effective,aliases,notes BC30-SW,Base cabinet 30 in shaker white,each,200.00,1,2026-10-01,"30 base; B30", EP-SW,End panel shaker white,each,60.00,1,2026-10-01,"end panel; finished end", DR-SW18,Drawer front 18 in shaker white,each,34.00,4,2026-10-01,,Sold in sets of 4 DEL-ZONE1,Delivery zone 1,per order,95.00,1,2026-10-01,,Zone table on tab 2
The columns that matter: a stable identifier, a plain description, the unit, the price, a minimum quantity, the effective date and the words customers use for the item. A notes column holds the exceptions a new hire would be told. We have only worked from fictional lists like this one. Which file formats the quote action reads exactly is not documented on this site yet. Ask us and we tell you before you send anything (a guess).
Six common habits break a price list, and each has a plain fix
| Problem | What goes wrong | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Scanned PDF or photo | Text is unreliable; a 6 becomes a 5 | Export from the source system. If you only have the PDF, retype the 50 items you quote most and say so. |
| Merged cells and section headers | A price sits under a heading, not in a row of its own | Repeat the section name in a column; one price per row. |
| Units hidden in the text | "Per 100" in a header, "each" on the shelf | A unit column on every row. |
| Price breaks written in prose | "10% off over 50" in a footnote | Put breaks in rows or in a small tier table the draft can cite. |
| No date | Nobody knows which list a quote used | An effective date on each row, or the file name and a date in a header. |
| Customer names for items | The buyer asks for "the 30 base" | An aliases column from your past requests. |
Freight, minimums and sign-off limits go in a notes file beside the list
Some of what makes a quote right is not a price. Write these in a short plain-English notes file, as you would for a new hire. In Staffbox this is part of the brain: a Markdown vault you own and can read.
- Freight: by zone, by weight or flat. Include the table.
- Minimum order and small-order fees.
- Quotes that need an owner signature, by dollar amount.
- Items you never discount.
- How long a quote is good for.
- What to say when you do not stock something. The quote action flags an unstocked item instead of substituting the nearest one (by design; 0 wrong totals in 475 test answers); your notes decide what the draft says next. On a new trade it had never seen, an electrical distributor (14 Oct, Dell test box), the default Qwen3 8B setup scored 30 of 40 and 2 of 15 on messy requests, with 8 wrong prices in 55, because per-foot units, price levels and trade shorthand are not handled yet; that is why we score your own list first (the electrical result).
A colleague who has never quoted for you can test the list in an hour
- Pick five recent requests.
- Hand each to a colleague who has never quoted for you, along with the price list and the notes file only.
- Time them and mark where they had to ask you something.
- Every question they asked is a missing column, a missing rule or an ambiguous row. Fix those first.
If a new hire cannot quote from your list, a model cannot either. It is a fair test and it costs nothing (our view).
For the free score, send the file you actually use, not a cleaned copy
- The price list as you have it, even if it is messy. We tell you what needs work.
- Thirty past quote requests as they arrived, and the quote you sent for each.
- The notes file or a voice memo transcript of the rules above.
- The date of the price list, and the date range of the requests.
Hold nothing back to look good. A score on a cleaned-up list tells you less than one on the file you actually use. We run it on our Mac mini in Atlanta and delete the files within 14 days of sending your results (per our draft data policy). Next: run the pilot.
Related by segment: A distributor's list tends to be long with unit and break issues: see Atlanta distributors and distributors. A cabinet shop prices catalogue rows plus options: cabinet and millwork. Mechanics of lookups are explained at price list lookup. Terms are in the glossary.
Questions
What format should my price list be in?
A spreadsheet export with one row per item is easiest for a person to check. Which formats the quote action reads exactly is not documented on this site yet, so ask before you send.
Do I need to clean the list before the free test?
No. Send the file you actually use and we tell you what needs work. A score on a cleaned-up list tells you less.
What happens to customer-specific prices?
Customer-specific price tiers have not been measured yet. Put some in the test so the score shows how they behave.
Sources
- How we measured: two fictional companies (Fieldstone IT, Peachtree Cabinet Works), graded by code, Qwen3 8B on a 16 GB Mac mini M4 (Dell RTX 3090 for the 30 Sep runs), 30 Sep to 6 Oct 2026. No customer has run Staffbox yet.
- Staffbox's own records: the offer (citing row and date) and the quote action in the open repo, 13 Oct 2026.
- The sample CSV is invented for this page.
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