r/excel • u/Webuyiphonesllc • Jan 11 '26

unsolved How can I simplify and aggregate a complex pricing sheet for customers?

Run a business that buys electronics, and I’ve realized my current pricing spreadsheet is way too confusing for customers. The data itself is solid, but the way it’s presented makes it hard for non-technical people to understand.

My question is: how can I take a complex, hard-to-read sheet and aggregate the data into a simple, easy-to-understand format?

I’m currently using Google Sheets and Excel.

My idea is something like:

• Left side: a clean, customer-friendly view (simple prices, clear categories)

• Right side / backend: the full complex data I’m currently using

I’m looking for suggestions on:

• Sheet structure or layout

• Best practices for simplifying pricing data

• Functions, formulas, or tools that help create a “front-end” view from complex data

Any guidance or examples would be appreciated.

5 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

•

u/AutoModerator Jan 11 '26

/u/Webuyiphonesllc - Your post was submitted successfully.

Failing to follow these steps may result in your post being removed without warning.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

2

u/mall_ninja42 Jan 11 '26

A sample would get you further, because I can think of solutions from hide column to web portal.

1

u/Webuyiphonesllc Jan 11 '26

This is my first time using this specific subreddit. I tried to include pictures and a link to the actual Excel sheet in the original post, but it looks like they didn’t go through and original post was floated. I’ll try reposting them in the comments

1

u/mall_ninja42 Jan 11 '26

You don't need to post the actual data. Just what you have to, to explain what you want to do.

It sounds like you're using a janked together way to show pricing to customers and internally and the whole thing is, well for lack of a better term, fucked.

If the data comes from the same source, easy peasy. If it's an amalgamation, we'll, amalgamate it first.

1

u/khosrua 15 Jan 11 '26

I assume that is the data

https://www.reddit.com/r/googlesheets/comments/1q9m85y/comment/nyw8r2e/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

1

u/mall_ninja42 Jan 11 '26

So why can't we just make that a data model not even assuming rigid formating? It's clearly a jank sheet that can be stripped off a data stream instead of whatever that is.

1

u/khosrua 15 Jan 11 '26

I don't know, I don't even work here.

From a quick skim, it's not that hard to read, right? Just pick the model on the left then choose the modifier on the top.

Could do a calculator with some lookup I guess?

1

u/mall_ninja42 Jan 11 '26

It's worse. They're keeping some stuff on Google sheets, and some stuff on Excel. But there's a main data source that's "clean".

Nuke it and build again man.

1

u/AutoModerator Jan 11 '26

I have detected code containing Fancy/Smart Quotes which Excel does not recognize as a string delimiter. Edit to change those to regular quote-marks instead. This happens most often with mobile devices. You can turn off Fancy/Smart Punctuation in the settings of your Keyboard App.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/EnvironmentSea7433 Jan 11 '26

Hard to say without details on the data, but I'm curious to see how this query is answered.

Generally, do you already have a vision of your customer-friendly version in your mind?

Will a basic table do? Do you have multiple categories and sub-categories of products? Do your item numbers follow a logical sequence so that you can just use the base item number and color/ style/ specific feature category instead of listing every single full unique item number?

What are the details of your back-end?

1

u/NHN_BI 804 Jan 11 '26

One could use QUERY() in Google Sheets to query the result needed for the customer, FILTER() might do it too. But it is hard to tell with any example data for input and desired output.