Import Data TemplatesImports
Import purchase price lists into Business Central from Excel or CSV
The price and discount files vendors send, applied to the purchase price lists in one import.
Vendors update their conditions by file: a new price list for the season, revised discounts, a few corrected articles. Keeping the purchase price lists aligned means finding each line, closing the old price and entering the new one, for every file that arrives.
With Import Data Templates, the file fills the lines of the price list chosen when the import starts. Lines are matched on their content, product, unit of measure, currency, minimum quantity and starting date, so the same import inserts new prices and updates existing ones; template actions close the prices the file replaces and activate the imported ones. A price update is one import.
What the file can look like
One row per price: the item, the starting date, the cost, the discount where the vendor gives one. The vendor's article numbers can be resolved through item references, units and currencies translated by mapping rules, and the price list itself is asked when the import starts, so one template serves every vendor list with that layout.
The sample below is the shipped example: purchase prices and line discounts as a vendor sends them.
Sample file: EX-PURCH-PRICES.csv
- Sample file: EX-PURCH-PRICES.csv
How the import works
-
Load the template
Create
EX-PURCH-PRICESfrom the Template Examples page, or describe the vendor's file in a template of your own: fill it in from the structure of the file, use Read Structure from File, or let Copilot propose it from a sample and review it before keeping it.
The EX-PURCH-PRICES template: the price list code first, then item, starting date, cost and line discount. -
Start the import
Choose Import Template on the Purchase Price Lists page, pick the template and the file, and answer the import parameters, in the example the price list. The check step validates items, dates and amounts, and reports ambiguous matches, before anything is written.
The flow: Import Template, the price list asked as a parameter, the file, the imported prices. -
The list is up to date
The imported lines are in the price list, inserted or updated depending on what the file carried. With the template actions, the prices the file replaces are closed with an ending date, never deleted, and the imported prices are activated; without them the new prices stay in draft for review.
The result of the sample file: four price list lines inserted.
Beyond the basic file
- Replace Prices closes the previous open price of each imported product with the day before the new starting date; Replace Price List treats the file as the complete list and also closes what the file no longer carries.
- Activate Prices activates the imported lines at the end of the import; a list still in draft is activated as a whole.
- Sales price lists import the same way, from the Sales Price Lists page, as in the
EX-SALES-PRICESexample. - A vendor that mails the file monthly: the automatic imports pick it up from a folder without a user.
Questions
Are old prices deleted?
No. Prices are never deleted by the import: replaced prices are closed with an ending date, so the price history stays intact.
What happens when the file carries a price that already exists?
Lines are matched on their content: the same product, unit, currency, quantity and starting date updates the existing line; a different starting date is a new price.
Does the import create the price list itself?
No. It fills the lines of an existing list, chosen as an import parameter in the shipped example.
Import Data Templates is available on Microsoft AppSource with a one-month free trial. Licenses are assigned per user in the Microsoft 365 admin center.