Vendor price comparison

Once a product has more than one purchase option — a second supplier, brand, or pack — the Vendors tab in Reports lines them up side by side and flags the cheapest source.

Which supplier is cheapest for this product?

The option with the lowest price per counting unit gets the Cheapest flag, as long as at least two options carry a price. Every product you buy two or more ways gets a card, sorted so the biggest price gap — your largest savings opportunity — is on top. Each card lists its options, one per row:

$/unit — the price of one of the product's counting units (its "$/lb", "$/each", …), so a Sysco case and a Costco tube compare directly even though the packs are different sizes. It's computed from each option's last known pack price divided by how many units the pack holds.
Cheapest — the option with the lowest $/unit is flagged, as long as at least two options carry a price.
$/Pack and Pack — the raw pack price and pack size behind the $/unit figure.
Last received — when that option last showed up on a receipt, so you can tell a live price from a stale one.

If two options tie on $/unit, both get the flag. An option with no price, or a price of $0, shows a dash in both price columns and is never flagged. A card with fewer than two priced options sinks to the bottom of the list.

Ground beef, two ways

Say Fresh Farms sells ground beef in a 4 × 5 lb case (20 lb) for $196.00, and Bulk Goods sells a 10 lb tube for $85.00. The case works out to $9.80/lb and the tube to $8.50/lb, so the tube gets the Cheapest flag. The gap is $1.30/lb. If the kitchen goes through 60 lb a week, buying the tube saves $78.00 a week.

The bigger pack is not always the better buy, and grocery shelf tags make the same point. In NIST's unit pricing example, a 64-ounce bottle of ketchup at $4.49 costs 7 cents an ounce, while a 38-ounce bottle at $2.29 costs 6 cents an ounce.

Cards sort by the gap in dollars per unit, not by how much you buy. A $2.00 gap on a spice you order twice a year sorts above the $1.30 gap on beef you order every week, so weigh the gap against your volume before you switch.

The Vendors tab: Ground Beef and Cheddar Cheese each listed with two supplier options side by side — supplier, pack size, price per pack and per pound, and last-received date — with the cheaper Bulk Goods option flagged "Cheapest"

Expand Show price history to see each option's delivered price per unit over the last 90 days, one line per supplier. The chart uses regular delivery lines only. Shorts, credits and returns are left out, so a credit never shows up as a free delivery.

The Ground Beef card expanded to reveal its price history: a line chart of delivered price per pound over 90 days, with the Fresh Farms case line rising toward $10 and the cheaper Bulk Goods 10 lb tube line running below it near $8.50

Where the numbers come from

The current price is each option's own cost memory — the last per-pack price you paid, remembered on the option. Receiving against an option updates that memory (see purchase options). Only a regular delivery line updates it: a short, credit or return never changes an option's price or its Last received date. Buying through a non-default option updates that option alone, and the case cost on the product page keeps following the default option. The report never invents a price and never fires a price alert — it only reads what your receipts already recorded.

Your history shows what you paid. To see whether the whole market moved, USDA's Market News publishes wholesale, retail and shipping reports for meats, poultry, eggs, dairy, fruits and vegetables. A Fresh Farms line that climbs while the market holds steady is a reason to call your rep.

Acting on it

The order list does the same math live: when another option is at least 5% cheaper per unit than the one a line is set to, a tappable Cheaper chip offers to switch the line to it — see the order list.
Every card links to the full product report if you want the complete lifecycle view for one product.
Price isn't the whole story — tap a supplier's name to open its scorecard and weigh the cheaper option against how reliably that vendor fills and delivers.

Why is a product missing from the Vendors tab?

A product appears only when it has at least two active options and the product itself is active. Archived products never show here, and the tab has no toggle to bring them back, because a stale price on a product you no longer stock should not push a supplier switch.