Here is an interesting twist on the good old VLOOKUP. How to find the pricing applicable for given quantity of a product?
Something like this:
Writing pricing tier lookup formula:
Meet the data:
Let’s say you have data like this:
Assume the data is in a table named pricing
PLOOKUP formula:
Okay, I am kidding. There is no PLOOKUP formula (P for Price). But we can whip our own version of PLOOKUP using other powerful formulas in Excel.
Let’s say we have product name in cell C6 and quantity in cell D6.
To find the applicable unit price of D6 units of C6 (for example 12 units of Mountain Bikes),
We can use below formula:
=SUMIFS(pricing[Unit price], pricing[Product],C6, pricing[Min. Qty],"<="&D6, pricing[Max. Qty], ">="&D6)
Remember: product prices are in the table named pricing.
How does this formula work?
This is a simple SUMIFS formula that looks at the unit price column of pricing table and sums up all unit prices that match with given product name (C6), with quantity (D6) between [Min. Qty] and [Max. Qty] columns.
In other words, this SUMIFS will narrow down to the one row containing Mountain Bike (11-25) tier and returns the price as $300, if our input is 12 units of Mountain Bike.
Oh wait..! What if the quantity is 32?
You are right, our SUMIFS is too lame to handle cases where the input quantity doesn’t fit in any of the tiers.
But, we can use a simple logic to fix this problem.
Here is the final formula that works in all situations:
=MAX( SUMIFS(pricing[Unit price], pricing[Product],C6, pricing[Min. Qty],"<="&D6, pricing[Max. Qty], ">="&D6),SUMIFS(pricing[Unit price],pricing[Product],C6,pricing[Min. Qty],""))
As you can see, we try to find the MAXIMUM of our original SUMIFS and a second SUMIFS that just looks at given product (C6) and blank value for [Min.Qty] column.
Of course, this assumes that prices go down with each tier. If your case is different, you need to alter the formula.
Download pricing tier lookup workbook:
Click here to download the example workbook. Examine the formulas and play with input data to learn how this works. There are two bonus goodies in the workbook.
- The conditional formatting on order form is slick.
- There is an alternative solution with INDEX+MATCH formulas in the data worksheet.
More variations of lookup problems:
Here are few more ways to lookup tricky data:
- Similar problem: Range lookup – find which range contains lookup value
- Case sensitive lookups
- VLOOKUP the last value
- Multi-condition lookup
- Lookup first non-blank value
- More ways to lookup your data
How would you write PLOOKUP?
While the SUMIFS approach works well, it does feel a bit long. Can you think of other ways to write pricing tier lookup formula? Post your answers in the comments section. Teach us something new.
17 Responses to “Pricing Tier Lookup formula”
nice you always bring new trick for us in excel and we learn you tricks thanks yaar
I think that this is a situation where I would fill in the gaps in the table to simplify the formula. Rather than blanks for "Mountain Bike" when the Qty. is > than 25, I would put 26 for "Min." and 99999 for "Max." and so on for the other bikes. That would simplify the SUMIFS or SUMPRODUCT formula:
=SUMPRODUCT((G12=pricing[Product])*(H12>=pricing[Min. Qty])*(H12<=pricing[Max. Qty])*(pricing[Unit price]))
After filling the gaps in Min. Qty column adding 1 to the previous Max. Qty (there's no need to fill in the gaps in Max Qty column), use Vlookup to get the price (array formula):
=VLOOKUP(H11,IF(pricing[Product]=G11,pricing[[Min. Qty]:[Unit price]],""),3)
I removed first row in Chandoo's sheet. The right formula is:
=VLOOKUP(H12,IF(pricing[Product]=G12,pricing[[Min. Qty]:[Unit price]],""),3)
SLightly longwinded.... I also had to add a a break into the top price band so eg. C8 on the data tab is 26, cell C13 is 25 and so forth
=IF(C9="",0,VLOOKUP(D9,INDIRECT("data!C"&MATCH(C9,data!B:B,0)&":E"&(COUNTIF(data!B:B,plookup!C9))-1+MATCH(C9,data!B:B,0)),3,TRUE))
I missed the alternative formukla cell. My formula was in cell C9 in the Plookup sheet
For those who prefer INDEX-MATCH, this formula for finding Unit Price can also ignore Max. Qty altogether once the final Min. Qty has been entered...
{=INDEX(pricing[Unit price],MATCH(D6,(pricing[Min. Qty])/(pricing[Product]=C6),1))}
...and an extra INDEX can make it non-array...
=INDEX(pricing[Unit price],MATCH(D6,INDEX((pricing[Min. Qty])/(pricing[Product]=C6),0),1))
Assuming that the price goes down every tier, you don't even need the Min. Qty
={MAX((pricing[Product]=C6)*(pricing[Max. Qty]+(pricing[Max. Qty]=0)*D6>=D6)*pricing[UnitPrice])*D6}
Consider array formula
=MIN(IF(B5:B23=G14,IF(C5:C23<=H14,E5:E23)))
or the relatively new function
=AGGREGATE(15,6,E5:E23/((B5:B23=G15)*(C5:C23<=H15)),1)
First of all, thanks for the formulas. I really like the AGGREGATE function. Never used it before.
Is this doable using Power Query?
[…] Pricing Tier Lookup Using Sumifs instead of lookups post by Chandoo […]
I need some rookie help here. I'm trying to replicate this in an existing spreadsheet with a different named range (Price) and headers [Price, Begin Date, End Date]. But when I replace the existing formula with my range and header names, I get an error at the first range/name combination in the formula. On the existing that would be at: pricing[Unit price] after =Max(SUMIFS(.
Can someone tell me why I can't get this to work? I tried a few of the other formulas in this string as well and I can get some to work in the example spreadsheet, but not in my spreadsheet. Thanks,
i.e., I'M the Rookie and I need some Expert help please. thx!
Nevermind. Just realized that the data is formatted as a named Table, not just a named range.
Nad's Formula without filling the min quantity column:
=IFERROR(VLOOKUP($D6,IF((Pricing[Product]=$C6)*(Pricing[Max. Qty]>=$D6),Pricing[[Min. Qty]:[Unit price]],""),3,1),MIN(IF(Pricing[Product]=$C6,Pricing[Unit price],"")))
$D6 for quantity
$C6 for product name
"NO NEED FOR FILLING THE MISSING QUANTITY" I realized that no need for neither filling the missing amount nor overwhelming formulas. I used INDEX and MATCH and utilized approximate match. Here is my much shorter and subtle formula for the first cell:
=INDEX(Pricing[Unit price];MATCH(0;IF(Pricing[Product]C6;"_";--(D6> Pricing[Max. Qty]));-1))
I hope this helps!
This was the perfect solution to my problem! Thank you for all the fun tips and tricks. Definitely my favorite website to troubleshoot Excel problems with. Thanks!