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Vendor price list import

Ingest vendor price list CSVs from the inbox, standardize item codes and prices, flag what changed, and push the updates into your ERP.

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The prompt

I want to ingest vendor price list CSVs from inbound email, standardize item codes and price columns to our ERP format, and load the data into the ERP. Can you build me a flow that parses the attachments, maps and normalizes the fields, compares prices against the prior version to flag any changes, and pushes the updated records into the ERP?

Just copy and paste the prompt into a new Parabola flow to get started.

What Parabola builds

A workflow with seven steps you can edit:

1. Watch the procurement inbox. A shared inbox or a forwarding address. The flow picks up every email with a vendor price list attached.

2. Parse the attachment. CSV, Excel, or PDF. The AI step handles supplier-specific formats and reads through quirky column headers.

3. Normalize the fields. Item code, description, unit price, currency, effective date, MOQ. Map to the ERP's expected schema.

4. Match against the master. Resolve each vendor item code to your internal SKU. Surface unmatched rows in a review queue.

5. Compare to the prior version. Calculate the delta in dollars and percent. Flag every price change, every new item, and every retired item.

6. Push to the ERP. Send the validated updates to NetSuite, Fulfil, or your ERP via API. Land the file as a staged import if a human approval is needed first.

7. Send the change summary. A digest for the buyer with the dollar impact, the supplier, and the top changes by dollar value.

Why teams stop doing this manually

Vendors send price lists when they feel like sending them. The format changes year over year. The file lives in an email thread that the buyer has to remember to open. The next time a PO goes out, the price is wrong because nobody updated the ERP, and either the supplier disputes the PO or the brand pays the old price and finds out at invoice time.

The manual version is the buyer opening the file, comparing to last year's tab in a workbook, retyping anything that changed, and entering each new item into the ERP. It works for ten suppliers and stable pricing. It collapses for fifty suppliers in a year with tariffs moving every quarter. The buyer becomes a data entry function instead of a category manager.

The work is reading, comparing, and entering. None of that requires a human's judgment. The judgment is in approving the price change after the buyer reviews the delta. Put the reading and entry in a flow and the buyer gets back to negotiating, not typing.

How it works

Step 1. Paste the prompt.

Open Parabola, paste the prompt in section 2, and let it ask follow-up questions about your supplier mix, your ERP item master, and whether you want auto-push or staged review for the updates.

Step 2. Connect your data.

The procurement inbox, your ERP, and the SKU master that maps vendor codes to your internal items.

Step 3. Run it on every inbound file.

A new price list lands, the flow ingests, compares, and updates. The buyer reviews the change summary in the morning.

Related prompts

FAQ

What if a supplier sends the price list as a PDF instead of a CSV?

The AI step parses PDFs natively. Cleaner inputs get cleaner output, but tables embedded in a supplier PDF extract correctly in most cases. Low-confidence rows land in the review queue.

How does the flow handle a supplier renaming their item codes?

The match step uses description and UPC as secondary keys. If the code changed but the item did not, the flow surfaces a candidate match and the buyer confirms once. The next file uses the new code without intervention.

Can I require manual approval before any ERP update?

Yes. Stage the updates in a Parabola Table. The buyer reviews the change digest, approves, and the flow pushes the approved subset.

What about currency conversions?

Pull the currency rate into the flow. The ERP record can either store the supplier currency directly or be converted to your reporting currency at the effective date.

How is this different from importing the CSV by hand?

The hand import does not check whether the file matches the master, does not flag the delta, does not normalize the fields, and does not catch supplier-format drift. The flow handles all of that and only escalates what needs a human.
Update the price master without retyping the spreadsheet.
Paste the prompt, point it at your inbox and your ERP, and let the import run on its own.
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