Inventory lookup case study

Inventory lookup case study: what Excel is actually doing

An inventory lookup model joins stock records to controlled product and supplier masters, then calculates reorder quantities only after match quality has been checked.

Read this Inventory lookup case study example

Start with the business need: Price stock records and identify items requiring manual review. Read each argument, reference, field, or control in the example before copying it into a larger model.

=IFNA(VLOOKUP(A2,PriceList,4,FALSE),"Review code")

The Inventory lookup case study mistake to catch

Calculating with a missing cost or supplier can create an incomplete purchase recommendation.

Your desk challenge for lesson 36

Reconcile matched + missing stock codes to the full stock list before calculating reorder value.

• Identify the lookup value and the authoritative reference table.
• Decide whether the match must be exact or approximate.
• Test a known match, a missing value, and a duplicate key.