Practical guide / Vendor Quote Comparison 1.0
Make the choice with scope and exclusions in view.
Record briefs, prices, exclusions, validity and a documented decision; the workbook does not choose a supplier for you.
Your first useful result: Write one comparable brief Follow the first task
Write one comparable brief
Record the scope, response deadline and budget before entering offers.
The brief keeps scope and working budget alongside offers.
Review: Review the labelled results and correct source warnings before acting.
Enter every complete proposal
Give each vendor a stable ID, total the proposal lines and mark exclusions and scope coverage explicitly.
Prices and exclusions remain visible separately for each valid offer.
Review: Review the labelled results and correct source warnings before acting.
Document the choice
Choose a valid, received quote and note who approved it, why and whether it exceeds the working budget.
The selected offer and remaining budget reflect the decision you recorded.
Review: Review the labelled results and correct source warnings before acting.
Check the assumptions.
- Save a working copy. Manual entry, with no automatic sync or external connections.
- Supplied tables have fixed capacities. Extend formulas, tables and validation together before using extra rows.
- Use one currency. Blank means unknown; enter 0 when the amount is known to be zero.
- Resolve the highlighted input rows before relying on the summary.
- Uses exact-mode XMATCH. Requires Excel 2021, Excel 2024 or Microsoft 365; older Excel editions are not supported. Native Excel, Google Sheets and Numbers have not been verified.
- Enter each vendor proposal as received, including delivery/tax amounts and explicit exclusions. Do not convert currencies in this workbook.
- Scope covered is a human assessment, not a verified guarantee. The sheet never selects a supplier automatically; record the chosen quote and the reason in Decisions.
- A quote valid through a date may be selected on that date. Past prices, taxes, contract terms and supplier performance are not inferred.
Keep a copy you can return to.
Keep the supplied clean and example files unchanged. Save your own working file with a useful name, such as vendor-quotes-2027-home.xlsx, and keep a dated backup before a large edit. A purchased ZIP is the blank source, not a backup of your entries.
If an input or formula is replaced
Undo the edit while it is still available, or return to a known good backup. If you need a fresh clean file, transfer only your records into its marked input cells and follow the setup guide again. Do not paste whole sheets over the supplied formulas, validations or reference lists. Check IDs, units, dates and linked results against the example before relying on the copy.
When the supplied rows are full
100 vendors · 120 briefs · 300 quotes · 120 decisions. Calculation ranges and validations have fixed capacities. A new row below a table does not prove that every linked result includes it.
For a separate period, project or volume, preserve the old workbook and start a named clean copy. If records must carry forward, record exactly which inputs you transfer, preserve their references and compare the opening and closing figures. Avoid copying historical activity as both an opening amount and a new movement. There is no automatic migration between files.
Inspect the workbook before you choose.
View its real sheets and a fictional calculation example.
Explore Vendor Quote ComparisonWritten for version 1.0. Examples describe the supplied workflow; they are not customer results.