Setting up a Price Book: Track Your Best Price for Laundry Detergent

Last year, I wrote a guest post for Centsable Momma on How to Create a Price Book.  I’ve used a price book for at least 6 years now, and I consider it to be a huge tool in helping our family save money.

 

Why do I need a price book?

You need a price book in order to answer these questions:

How do I know what is a “good” price on laundry detergent?

Is this sale price a “stock-up price”?

I’m a loyal brand of ____.  How often does it go on sale?  How many bottles should I buy to last until it goes on sale again?

What stores offer the best price on laundry products?

When is the best time of year to buy laundry products?

A price book is a wealth of data.  The idea behind it is to track the rock-bottom prices of items you typically buy, and then buy those items when they are on sale at their lowest price.

It’s a fabulous concept really.  I can’t even describe to you the money it has saved my family over the past 6+ years I’ve used mine.

 

How to Make Your Price Book

I wrote a detailed tutorial on how to create a price book at Centsable Momma last year.  So head over there to read the specific instructions if you need them.

Here are the highlights to get you started:

From Wal-Mart or Target, buy an 8.5” x 5.5” 3-ring binder and 2 packs of dividers.

Then create tabs of the major grocery categories you typically purchase.  Examples: Laundry, Baby Care, Meat, Toiletries, Paper Goods, Canned Goods

Next, download my free printable price book form.  Print them on 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper and cut them down the middle.  Hole punch the forms and place them in your beautiful new notebook.

 

 

How to Use Your Price Book

Use one price book form for each item you purchase.  One form should contain the pricing for laundry detergent, one for spray stain removers, one for in-wash stain removers, one for fabric softener, etc.

If you try to put more than one product on a form, you’ll quickly be frustrated at the confusion it causes.  Trust me – one product per form.

The top of your form now looks like this:

			Item:   Laundry Detergent
Date	Store	Brand	Size/Price	Unit Price	Sale?

 

You’ll see the headings at the top of the form in which you enter your data from the store receipt.  Fill in each heading so you’ll have an accurate picture of the product’s true cost.

Date:  The date you purchased the product

Store:  The store you purchased the product.  Feel free to use your own abbreviations.  I use:  Wags (Walgreens), Kr (Kroger), WM (Walmart), T (Target) and LF (Lowes Foods).  Use the abbreviations that make the most sense to you.

Brand:  The brand of product you purchased. 

Size/Price:  Record the size (quantity) of the product and how much you paid for it.  Note: When recording laundry detergent, gather the data for how many ounces the bottle contains or how many loads.  Whichever you choose, be consistent.  It’s easier to analyze your data if you’re consistent with the unit of measurement.

Unit Price:  The price you paid divided by the size (quantity) of the product.

Sale:  Record whether the item was purchased on sale.  Yes/No is sufficient.

 

Now when you fill in your data, it will look like this:

			Item:   Laundry Detergent
Date	Store	Brand	Size/Price	Unit Price	Sale?
01/14/2011	Kr	Tide	32 ld / 4.99	$0.15 / load	Yes
02/11/2011	WM	Arm & Hammer	44 ld / 4.50	0.10 / load	No
03/05/2011	Kr	Gain	32 ld / 5.50	0.17 / load	No
04/14/2011	Kr	Tide	64 ld / 10.99	0.17 / load	Yes
05/12/2011	Wags	Arm & Hammer	32 ld / 3.25	0.10 / load	Yes

 

 

 

Interpret the Data in Your Price Book

So you’ve gone to all of the trouble (really, it’s maybe 30 minutes worth of time) to create your price book and enter your data. 

Now what do you do with it?

Keep track of your purchases over the next few months.  It will take at least 2-3 months of data before you can really interpret the data.

Once you have several months of data, look for these types of trends:

– How often your favorite detergent goes on sale – every 2 weeks? Once every 3 months?
Note: if your favorite detergent goes on sale every 2 weeks, it won’t go on sale at the same sale price that often.  With your price book, you’ll be able to see when the lowest sale prices are and buy then.

– Are your preferred laundry products ever on sale at your favorite store?
If they are rarely, if ever on sale, your data suggests you need to change your shopping location.

– Is the laundry product only on sale in one particular size?
Does the store only put the 32-load detergent on sale and never the 64-load bottle?  If so, you know by the unit price which one is your best purchase.

– Is there a time of year that your favorite products go to rock-bottom prices?
You need  10-12 months of data to know this type of information.  But if you analyze the trends of the information you’ve recorded, I can almost guarantee that there are one or two periods each year that laundry products reach rock-bottom.  My price book tells me so.

 

 

Tips and Tricks

Through many years of price booking, here are a few suggestions I’ll make:

• Write your prices in your price book in pencil.  Pencil is easy to erase and looks nice and neat if you make errors that must be corrected.
• Write the name of the product on the Item line in red.  It stands out easily when you’re thumbing through the pages.
• Schedule a time on your to-do list to enter receipts.  Pick a time period of once a week or once every couple of weeks to sit down and enter receipts.  Otherwise, they’ll pile up in a hurry.
• Your price book doesn’t have to be perfect.  It’s much better to have a functional, organized place to write down your data than have a price book with your family’s logo hand-stenciled on the front in 14 different colors.
• Enter every receipt you can get your hands on.  The more data you have, the better you’ll be able to spot trends.

 

Do you use a price book?  What are your best tips?

I am pleased to link this post to Frugal Friday over at Life as MOM.