What this tool does
A running record of what staples cost where. Item, shop, size or unit, price and unit price. Twelve to thirty rows, up to four pages.
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Why a price book beats a shopping app
A shop tells you the price today. A price book tells you whether today is cheap, which is the only useful question and the one nobody can answer from memory.
The unit price column
Price alone cannot be compared across sizes, and that is precisely what makes a multi-buy look like a saving. Work the unit price out once, write it down, and the comparison is done for ever.
Give it a month
Twenty staples over four or five shops is enough. After a month you will recognise a real low price on sight, and you will stop paying attention to the word offer.
What goes in each column
- Item — one line per thing you buy regularly; twenty staples is plenty.
- Shop — including the online ones, which are often the outlier.
- Size / unit — the number on the packet: 500g, 12 rolls, 1.5 litres.
- Price — what you actually paid, offer or not.
- Price per unit — price divided by size. This is the only column you compare across rows.
Printing it
Choose A4 or US Letter before you download and the table is laid out to fit that sheet — column widths are shares of the page, not fixed millimetres, so nothing is cut off at the right-hand edge. Alternate row shading can be turned off if you are photocopying in black and white, where a pale tint sometimes reproduces as a muddy grey. If you need more than one page, set the page count before downloading rather than printing the same PDF twice; the pages are then numbered, which matters the moment two of them get separated.
FAQs
Quick answers
Is the grocery price book free to print?
Yes. Set it up, download the PDF and print as many copies as you need. No account, no watermark on your own copy beyond our faint brand mark.
Can I change the number of rows?
Yes. The slider sets rows per page within a range that keeps every row big enough to write in. You can also print up to four pages in one download.
Can I change the column headings?
Not on this sheet — the columns are fixed so the layout stays even and legible. The title and the header label are yours to edit.
A4 or US Letter?
Both. Pick the paper size before you download and the table is laid out to fit that sheet.
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Further reading
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