How to Spot the Lowest Price Across All Your Suppliers (Without Going Line by Line)

When you’re managing purchasing or reviewing invoices, it doesn’t take long to realize how wildly supplier pricing can vary — even for the exact same product. We learned this the hard way. Before we built 3rd Armor, we were buried in PDFs, spreadsheets, and highlighters just trying to answer a simple question: “Who’s giving us the best price?” 

Turns out, finding that answer manually is possible — but it's slow, error-prone, and nearly impossible to scale.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the exact manual process we used to spot the lowest prices across suppliers. Then we’ll show you how we automated the entire workflow — and how you can, too. 

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Key Takeaways 

• You can compare supplier pricing manually with the right structure 

• But manual work doesn’t scale — and errors are easy to miss 

• We used to spend hours each week sorting through line items 

• We built 3rd Armor to automate that entire process in seconds 

• Even without software, these tips will help you catch more overcharges 

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Our Old Manual Process (Before 3rd Armor) 

This is how we used to compare prices across vendors, step by step: 

Step 1: Gather Historical Invoices 

We downloaded every PDF invoice we could find from the last 3–6 months. Each one was filed in folders by supplier and date to keep things organized: 

/Invoices/2024/April/Supplier-A.pdf 

This gave us a central archive — and a starting point for the actual work. 

Step 2: Extract Line Items 

Next, we manually opened each invoice and copied product-level data into a spreadsheet. These were the key columns: 

• Item Name 

• SKU 

• Price 

• Quantity 

• Supplier 

• Invoice Date 

Every invoice was different. Some had product names, some had codes, some had both. Getting clean, consistent data took time. 

Step 3: Normalize Product Names 

Suppliers rarely label items the same way. “10ft ½” copper pipe” might appear as: 

• “1/2” Copper Pipe – 10FT” 

• “10 FT COPPER .5IN” 

• “CP-10-0.5” 

To make comparisons possible, we created a “Common Name” column to group equivalent items under one normalized label. 

This was a painstaking but critical step. 

Step 4: Filter and Compare 

With the spreadsheet filled in, we used Excel filters and pivot tables to analyze by Common Name. For each product, we listed the prices from each supplier and sorted them from lowest to highest. 

Step 5: Highlight the Lowest Price 

Finally, we used conditional formatting to color-code the lowest price per item. Green for best, red for worst. This helped us quickly see where we were overspending — and with whom. 

We also flagged suppliers with frequent overcharges or inconsistent pricing for follow-up. 

Where Manual Methods Break Down 

Despite the structure, this process was: 

• Time-consuming — We were spending 4–6 hours a week just to run comparisons 

• Error-prone — Misspellings and mismatches often threw off results 

• Hard to maintain — Adding more suppliers or SKUs made the system break down 

• Lacking context — We couldn’t easily see price trends over time 

Most importantly: it didn’t scale. The moment invoice volume increased, accuracy dropped and we lost control of the process. 

How 3rd Armor Does It Automatically 

After enough late nights with spreadsheets, we built 3rd Armor to eliminate this exact pain. Here’s how the software works today: 

• Reads PDFs Automatically  Every invoice is scanned and line items are extracted — no manual copy-paste required. 

• Normalizes Product Names with AI  The software recognizes equivalent products even with inconsistent codes or naming. 

• Builds a Price History for Every SKU  You get a searchable database showing who charged what, when, and how often. 

• Highlights the Lowest Price Instantly  Every item is tracked, sorted, and flagged in real time — no pivot tables needed. 

The result? What used to take us 6 hours now takes a fraction of the time. 

What This Looks Like in Practice 

With 3rd Armor’s software in place, you're able to: 

• See pricing discrepancies as invoices arrive 

• Compare suppliers in real time before placing orders 

• Flag vendors with creeping prices 

• Make better purchasing decisions — without extra headcount 

What used to be reactive became proactive. What used to be error-prone is now auditable. And what used to require a spreadsheet ninja? Now it just needs a login. 

Still Doing It Manually? Here’s What Helps 

If you’re not ready for automation yet, here are the top manual steps that still make a big difference: 

• Standardize invoice file names and folder structure 

• Create a reusable spreadsheet template with consistent columns 

• Use a “Common Name” column to normalize item naming 

• Apply conditional formatting to quickly see pricing patterns 

• Keep a weekly or monthly review schedule to batch comparisons and spot trends 

These won’t replace automation — but they will help you claw back time and margin until you’re ready. 

Spotting the lowest price across multiple suppliers shouldn’t require a spreadsheet marathon. We learned that the hard way. That’s why we built 3rd Armor — not because we wanted to sell software, but because we were tired of spending hours chasing pennies. 

If you’re still doing this manually, we respect the grind — we lived it. 

But when you’re ready to automate the hard parts, we’re ready to help. 

Want to see how 3rd Armor makes price comparison effortless? 

📊 Explore How It Works