I've taken a new job that requires me to compare past inventory with current inventory, annually, and perform some basic comparisons on each product. Each year we have around 18,000-22,000 products (rows), but the inventory varies by about 5-15% each year
(some products are discontinued, some new products are added). For each product we have roughly a dozen columns of data such as product ID#, price, markup, geographic location, time to reach destination(s), etc. We manage this using Excel 2010.
I need to compare last year's inventory with this year's, and I will do this annually. (E.g., how much has each item increased in price, or delivery time, or whatever.) I need to do this for each product (row). I'd like to combine them into one sheet, sorted
by product ID#, with each row matched up by product ID# when possible, and a blank space inserted when there's no match.* Then I can compare the past and current inventory, calculate e.g. how this year’s price (or shipping time, etc.) compares to last year’s,
for each product.
*I.e., ideally, Excel would insert a blank row in the CurrentYear data where a product has been discontinued (and maybe write “Discontinued”), and insert a blank row in the LastYear data where a new product was added this year (and maybe write “New product”).
The generic challenge is a fairly common (if not easy) task: to first sort and then do a 'best match' of uneven data sets, lining them up by row and inserting spaces as needed to best match up the data. A similar function might apply, for example, to an annual
membership list of people, in which some people drop out and some new members are added each year. I looked but haven't yet found a thread on this. I'm guessing it will involve VLOOKUP, or INDEX / MATCH, or COUNTIF (conditional formatting), but I'm not sure.
This is something like a “reverse Delete Duplicates”.
Btw, if there is a much easier way to do this in Excel 2013, this might make the case for upgrading our office software.
I don't know how to use VBA, alas.
Many, many thanks!!
Update: I've added an illustration, below.
In 2014, two items were discontinued: Snickers and Sugar; and four items were added: Tomatoes and 3 kinds of Peas. I've colored these in yellow (discontinued) and green (new item), here, to make them easy to see.
Then...
... I'd like to combine these inventories into one list. For example, I'd like to know the price change for each item that we sold in both 2013 and 2014. (And do some basic analysis like the overall average, etc.)
The ideal Combined sheet might look like the following:
But I'm not sure how to do this for 20,000 items. (Can Excel handle that amount?)
Thanks again!