Pricebook cleanup: duplicates, PLUs and dead items

On this page

1. Start with a full export
2. Duplicates
3. PLUs
4. Departments
5. Prices and costs that don’t add up
6. Dead items
7. Make it a routine

Every scan at your counter is a lookup in the pricebook. The register asks what the item is, what it costs, how it’s taxed and whether the customer needs to show ID. When the pricebook is wrong, the register gives the wrong answer with complete confidence.

Pricebooks get messy slowly. A vendor rep adds a new flavor under a code that doesn’t scan. A clerk creates an item in a hurry and leaves the cost blank. A product gets discontinued, but its record stays forever. None of it looks urgent on any one day. All of it shows up later, as price complaints at the counter and counts that never match.

The first cleanup takes a few hours. After that, a short routine keeps it clean.

Start with a full export

Pull the whole pricebook into a spreadsheet, one row per item, with as many of these columns as your system gives you:

• Barcode or PLU
• Description
• Department
• Retail price and unit cost
• Tax setting
• Age restriction and SNAP setting
• Last sold date

Work on the copy. Make the real changes through your normal process, so every change reaches the register and gets checked there. Then sort the sheet by each column in turn. Problems jump out when similar rows sit next to each other.

Duplicates

Same product, two codes

The most common duplicate is one product saved under two versions of its barcode. Depending on who entered it, the same code can be stored with or without its last digit (the check digit), with or without leading zeros, or in the short form printed on small packages instead of the full code. To the register, those are different items.

The product scans under one record while the price you changed sits on the other. Sales split between the two, and neither record ever matches the shelf.

To find them, sort by description and look for pairs with the same name and size. Then take the product to the register and scan it. Whichever record comes up is the one its barcode actually finds, so keep that one. Before you remove the other, check whether it belongs to a deal or an item list, and move those over first.

Same name, different products

Some pairs aren’t duplicates at all. A single can and a 12-pack are different items with different barcodes. So are a pack and a carton, or a 20 oz bottle and a 1 liter. When two real items share a vague description, fix the description instead of deleting one of them.

A simple naming habit prevents most of this: brand, product, flavor, size, then pack count. “Brand cola 20 oz” and “Brand cola 12 oz 12 pk” won’t get mixed up.

PLUs

PLUs are the codes for things without a barcode: coffee and fountain sizes, roller grill items, loose candy, made-to-order food. They work well when they’re organized and badly when they pile up.

• Number them in blocks. Hot drinks get one range, cold drinks the next and food after that, so cashiers learn where to look.
• Keep a printed PLU sheet or a page of barcodes at the counter, so cashiers scan instead of typing from memory.
• Remove PLUs for things you no longer sell, so nobody picks an old one by mistake.

Watch the catch-all keys. An open-price “misc grocery” PLU or a department key gets the customer out the door, but the sale is recorded with no item attached. That item then looks short at the next count, and its sales never show up in your item reports. When cashiers lean on these keys, find out which product failed to scan and add it properly. If your register keeps a list of barcodes it couldn’t find, review it every week. It’s the best list of missing items you’ll get.

Departments

Departments do more than group sales on a report. On most registers, the department sets the default tax rate and age check for the items in it, and often the SNAP setting too. A vape cartridge filed under snacks rings up with snack tax and no age prompt.

Go through your department list and check that:

1. Each department has one clear purpose. Retire vague ones like “misc 2” or “new items.”
2. Tax, age restriction and SNAP settings are right for everything in it.
3. Open-price entry is allowed only where you actually need it.
4. Each department maps to the right industry category code, if your reports or programs use NACS categories.

Then sort the export by department and read down the descriptions. Odd ones stand out fast: a phone charger in dairy, energy drinks spread across several departments. Move them, then check their tax and age settings again.

Prices and costs that don’t add up

Sort by price, then by margin, and look at both ends of each list.

• Zero or blank prices. These ring up free or make the cashier type a price.
• Price below cost. Sometimes that’s a deliberate promotion. More often the cost went up and nobody changed the retail.
• Missing costs. Every item without a cost makes your margin reports less trustworthy.
• Margins far outside the department’s normal range. A case cost entered as a unit cost, or the reverse, shows up as a margin that is either negative or impossibly high.

Dead items

Dead items are records for products that no longer sell. Pick a window that fits the product, such as 90 days with no sales for most grocery and longer for seasonal items, and list everything that falls outside it.

Don’t delete straight from that list. For each item:

• Look on the shelf and in the back room. If you still have it, it may not be selling because it rings up wrong or scans under a duplicate record.
• See whether it belongs to a deal or an item list.
• Ask the vendor whether it was discontinued or replaced by a new code. New packaging often brings a new barcode.

When an item is truly finished, sell through or return what’s left, pull the shelf tag, and then deactivate or remove the record. Keep its history if your system allows, because old sales still belong in last year’s reports.

Make it a routine

A pricebook stays clean when one person owns it. Everyone else writes down requests, and the owner makes changes the same way every time.

A schedule that works for a typical store:

• Weekly: new items added at the counter, and any barcodes the register couldn’t find.
• Monthly: zero prices, below-cost items, missing costs and items in odd departments.
• Quarterly: duplicates and dead items.

In Advantage, departments, tax rates and NACS categories are kept in Setup, the Dead Inventory page shows items that have stopped moving, and the Events log shows who changed what. Item edits go to the register through Send to POS, which marks each change once the register confirms it.