What is a wholesale price list? Formats and columns explained
A wholesale price list is the file a supplier gives an approved account showing every SKU it sells, the cost to that account, the pack size and the barcode.
Last reviewed 8 min readSupplyForge LLC
A wholesale price list is the file a supplier gives an approved account showing every SKU it sells, what that account pays, and how each product is packed.
No two suppliers name the columns the same way: Dealer, Net, Cost, Your Price and Tier 1 can mean one thing on one file and four different things on the next. Picking the wrong column, or reading a per-case figure as per-unit, is the most common way a wholesale seller buys a SKU that never had margin in it.
What a wholesale price list is and who issues it
A wholesale price list is issued by a brand or a distributor to an account it has already approved, and it is normally confidential. Public files advertised as wholesale price lists are almost always drop-ship programs, liquidation lots or closeout pallets, not authorized distribution.
A price list is not a stock list. The price list says what a SKU costs and how it is packed; availability lives in a separate feed, a portal lookup or a call to a rep, because inventory moves hourly and a price file does not.
Three fields decide whether a price list is usable at all: an identifier that can reach an Amazon listing, a cost, and a pack quantity. A file missing any one of the three cannot be scanned without going back to the supplier.
The columns on a wholesale price list and what each one means
Wholesale price list columns fall into a stable vocabulary of about a dozen fields, each with its own set of aliases and its own way of going wrong.
| Column | Common aliases | What it holds | The trap |
|---|---|---|---|
| SKU | Item #, Part #, Stock # | The supplier's internal code for the line | Not portable — two distributors carry the same product under different SKUs |
| MPN | Model, Mfr Part #, Manufacturer # | The brand's own part number | Often shared across colors and pack sizes, so it maps to several ASINs |
| UPC | EAN, GTIN, Barcode, Item Code | The barcode that reaches an Amazon listing; EAN and GTIN are separate standards, not synonyms | Spreadsheets strip leading zeros and round long codes |
| Dealer | Cost, Net, Wholesale, Your Price, Tier 1 | What your account pays | May be pre-discount, and may be per case with nothing saying so |
| Sale | Promo, Deal, Special, Closeout | A temporary cost below dealer | Frequently 0.00 on non-promo rows rather than blank |
| MSRP | List, Retail, SRP | A suggested retail price | Advisory, often far above street price, and useless for ROI |
| MAP | Minimum advertised, MAP price | The lowest price you may advertise | Owned and enforced by the brand, not the distributor |
| Case pack | Master pack, Inner pack, Case Qty, UOM | Units per shipping case | The most expensive column on the file to misread |
| MOQ | Min Qty, Minimum, Order Multiple | The smallest order the supplier accepts | Sometimes in cases, sometimes in units, sometimes in dollars |
| Qty on hand | Stock, Available, ATP, Inventory | Units in the warehouse at export time | A snapshot, stale within hours, sometimes split by warehouse |
| Ship weight | Ship Wt, Cube, Dimensions | Weight and carton size | Usually the case weight, not the unit weight |
| Brand | Manufacturer, Vendor, Line | The brand that owns the Amazon listing | Absent on single-brand files, essential on distributor files |
The identifier columns decide match rate and the money columns decide margin, so read those two groups before anything else. The difference between UPC, EAN, GTIN and MPN covers the identifier side in detail. Column order carries no meaning: two exports from the same distributor a quarter apart routinely reorder fields, insert a discount column or rename Dealer to Net, so an import should map on header text rather than position.
Cost columns: dealer, net, sale and tier breaks
Cost is where the vocabulary diverges hardest: a supplier's cost columns encode a discount structure, not a single number. Four patterns cover almost every file.
The layered pattern prints List, Dealer, Net and Your Price side by side, each the previous one minus a percentage that lives in your account terms rather than in the file. The tiered pattern prints break columns — 1–5, 6–23, 24+, or Tier 1 through Tier 3 — and expects you to pick the break matching your order quantity. The negotiated pattern prints one cost column already set to your account's rate, so the same SKU shows a different number on another seller's copy. The promotional pattern adds a Sale column beside Dealer.
For the promotional pattern the rule is fixed: take Sale when it holds a value above zero, otherwise take Dealer. Reading left to right overprices every promoted row and hides the best margins in the catalog.
Reading one row as a per-unit landed cost
A single price list row has to be normalized before it can be compared to an Amazon selling price, and the normalization has four steps rather than one.
| Step | Input | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Row as printed | Case Pack 12, Dealer 214.80, Sale 0.00, MSRP 29.99, MAP 24.99, MOQ 2 cases | — |
| Pick the cost column | Sale is 0.00, so take Dealer | $214.80 |
| Establish the basis | Case Pack is 12 and $214.80 is a case price | $17.90 per unit |
| Size the minimum buy | MOQ of 2 cases at 12 units each | 24 units, $429.60 |
| Add inbound freight | $38.00 to move those 24 units | $1.58 per unit |
| Landed unit cost | $17.90 plus $1.58 | $19.48 |
Getting the basis wrong is a twelve-fold error in either direction. Reading $214.80 as a unit cost makes the row look impossible and it gets skipped; reading a per-each list as a case list turns a $214.80 unit into an apparent $17.90, the best-looking margin in the file. And $17.90 against a $29.99 MSRP reads as 40% off, a meaningless signal: against the $24.99 MAP, a 15% referral fee and an assumed $4.25 fulfillment fee, net proceeds are $16.99 on a $19.48 landed cost — a loss of $2.49 a unit at the lowest price the brand allows you to advertise. That floor is covered in what MAP pricing is and how it applies on Amazon, and the full cost stack in what landed cost includes.
How a brand price list differs from a distributor price list
Brand price lists and distributor price lists carry different columns because the two businesses solve different problems, and knowing which kind of file is in front of you predicts what will be missing from it.
| Attribute | Brand price list | Distributor price list |
|---|---|---|
| Row count | Tens to a few thousand, one brand | Thousands to tens of thousands, many brands |
| Brand column | Absent, because every row is the same brand | Present and load-bearing for gating checks |
| MAP column | Usually printed, because the brand owns the policy | Often absent, since MAP belongs to the brand |
| Cost structure | One dealer price, sometimes with a volume break | Tiered breaks plus account discounts on a list price |
| Reissue cadence | Annual or seasonal | Weekly or daily in volatile categories |
| Stock data | Rarely included; you call a rep | A quantity column, sometimes split by warehouse |
| Case pack | Often uniform at 1, 6 or 12 and clearly stated | Mixed across the file, occasionally hidden in a UOM code |
The practical consequence: a distributor file needs its brand column reconciled against your gating status before margin matters, while a brand file needs the MAP column carried into the ROI calculation from the start. A third kind sits between the two: a rep group or master distributor issuing several brands under one account, with a distributor's tier structure and the brand's MAP column at once.
Price list formats and what each one costs to use
Wholesale price lists arrive in five formats, and the format decides how much work happens before a single row reaches Amazon. CSV and Excel exports are directly usable. PDFs need extraction, and column boundaries, repeating page headers and wrapped product names defeat naive parsers, so spot-check an extracted PDF against the original before buying from it. Printed catalogs with a separate dealer-net insert mean manual entry, economic only on a short list. B2B portals with no export button get paged through, or the rep sends a file on request. FTP and EDI feeds are the best case, normally offered only to larger accounts.
Ask for the reissue schedule when the account is approved. A list refreshed quarterly against a supplier who reprices monthly is already wrong by the time the purchase order goes out.
Scanning a wholesale price list against Amazon
Forge Command imports a supplier catalog of tens of thousands of rows and matches each line to an Amazon ASIN on UPC, EAN, ISBN, GTIN, MPN or model number, brand plus title, or a direct Amazon URL, and one wholesale row can carry links to more than one ASIN. Bulk scan takes a pasted or uploaded CSV or Excel file with no connector built first, and three no-code tiers cover the harder formats: a PDF upload with AI extraction, an AI-built API recipe, and an AI-built browser recipe for a website login.
Forge Command has real limits: your own Amazon SP-API credentials are required before the catalog engine does anything, Keepa lookups spend your own paid tokens and are opt-in, and a no-match rate near 10% to 15% is normal on a real catalog. Matching mechanics are in how to match a supplier catalog to Amazon ASINs, and the funnel from raw file to shortlist in how to scan a wholesale price list for profitable ASINs.
Frequently asked questions
Do suppliers publish wholesale price lists publicly
Most do not. A wholesale price list is normally released only after a brand or distributor approves the account, and it usually carries a confidentiality clause. Files advertised publicly as wholesale price lists are typically drop-ship, liquidation or closeout offers.
Which column on a price list should I use as my cost
Take Sale when it holds a value above zero, otherwise take Dealer, then confirm against the case pack column whether that figure is per unit or per case. Add inbound freight before comparing the result to an Amazon selling price.
What is the difference between a price list and a stock list
A price list states cost, pack size and identifiers, and changes on a reissue schedule. A stock list states how many units are available right now and goes stale within hours. Some distributors merge them; many keep them separate.
Does a wholesale price list include freight
Usually not. A price list quotes the cost at the supplier's dock, so inbound freight, prep and any handling surcharge sit outside it. That is why the number printed on the list is never the number to underwrite a purchase against.