Try the demo — no signup
Menu
Products
BOM Health CheckCheck a single export for data quality issuesBOM CompareCompare revised BOMs and material exportsMaterial DeltaEstimate the cost impact of revision changesPrice DeltaTrack price movement, quote exposure, and approved alternate pricingQuote CompareValidate supplier quotes against your BOMPrice List CheckFreeCompare two price lists instantlyMaterial Export CleanerFreeFlag spreadsheet junk before handoffDuplicate Part FinderFreeFind repeated part numbers before handoff
Solutions
PrefabricationVDC / BIMProcurementMechanical & FPDistributionNew
Pricing
Resources
Sample reportsBuyer packetSecuritySupport
Log inTry the demo — no signup

Supplier quote prep

How to clean a supplier quote before comparing it

Supplier quotes often arrive from different systems, branches, reps, or exported PDFs. Some are clean line-item files. Others include title rows, repeated headers, subtotal lines, notes, merged-looking fields, or columns that do not line up with the BOM.

Who this helps: For procurement, purchasing, project coordination, distributor inside sales, and anyone validating supplier quotes against a BOM or buy list.

Remove structural junk, not material data

Cleaning a supplier quote should not rewrite part numbers, quantities, units, prices, supplier names, or descriptions. The safe first step is to flag spreadsheet structure problems so the team can review a cleaner file.

  • Blank rows.
  • Repeated header rows.
  • Subtotal and total rows.
  • Note or comment rows.
  • Title/banner rows.

Confirm quote columns before validation

Once the file structure is cleaner, confirm the quote line fields: supplier part number, description, quantity, unit, unit price, and extended price when available.

Keep uncertain rows visible

A row that might be material should not disappear. Flag it as Needs review and keep it visible in the cleaned preview or flagged rows export.

Checklist

Supplier quote cleanup checklist

  1. 1Identify blank rows and repeated headers.
  2. 2Flag subtotal, total, note, and title rows.
  3. 3Remove empty columns only when they have no useful values.
  4. 4Keep possible material rows visible for review.
  5. 5Confirm part, quantity, unit, and price columns before quote comparison.
  6. 6Export flagged rows so the supplier or buyer can resolve unclear lines.

Watchouts

Common mistakes

Changing quote values during cleanup

Cleanup should not rewrite prices, quantities, units, or descriptions. That belongs in review, not automatic cleaning.

Deleting note rows blindly

Some notes contain alternates, exclusions, or scope limitations. Flag them before removing them from comparison.

Treating PDF extraction as perfect

Text PDFs can be useful, but extracted rows should be reviewed before purchase-order decisions.

Free browser-local workflow

Run the free tool

Use Material Export Cleaner to test the workflow on your own material file. Raw files are not stored by default.

Run the free tool