The Scenario
You joined a 15-person startup three months ago as operations manager. Your job title says operations. Your actual job is buying everything: office furniture, cables, monitors, standing desks, whiteboards, ergonomic chairs — 12 categories of equipment needed before the new hires start in six weeks.
Column A has the 12 categories. Column B has the max budget per item. What you need is the 3 cheapest currently in-stock options per category from US online retailers, with product name, price, and store name in columns C, D, and E.
The bad version:
- Google "cheapest standing desk under $400." Open 6 tabs. Manually compare prices. Note the retailer and URL somewhere. Repeat for the next 11 categories.
- Spend an hour on the first 3 categories. Remember that you also need to verify in-stock status because two of the things you bought last week said "in stock" online but shipped in 3 weeks.
- Build a comparison table by hand. Realize two of your "cheapest" options are from the same retailer, which won't help you negotiate.
The gear has to be ordered before next Friday. Nobody is paying you to spend Thursday afternoon comparison shopping on Google — you're supposed to be onboarding 8 new people at the same time.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent that lives inside your Google Sheet. It reads your category list and budget column, runs the Composio Search shopping tool across US retailers for each row, and writes the results back in the columns you specified.
Search for the 3 cheapest in-stock products for each category in column A with a max price from column B and write the product name, price, and retailer name into columns C, D, and E, with one result per row and the category repeated in column A.
All 12 categories, 3 options each, 36 rows of structured data in one pass.
What You Get
- Column A: Category label repeated for each result row
- Column B: Max price from your original list (unchanged)
- Column C: Product name
- Column D: Price
- Column E: Retailer name
- Only in-stock items included; out-of-stock results are skipped
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
You want to add the product URL for direct ordering
For each category in column A with a max price in column B, search for the 3 cheapest in-stock products and write name, price, retailer, and direct product URL into columns C through F.
Some categories have specific brand requirements
Column G has preferred brand names for certain rows. The others can be any brand.
Search for the 3 cheapest in-stock products for each category in column A within the budget in column B. If column G has a preferred brand name for that row, filter results to that brand only. Write name, price, and retailer into columns C, D, and E.
You want to flag categories where nothing falls within budget
Search for the cheapest in-stock option for each category in column A within the max price in column B. If no in-stock product exists within budget, write 'No match' in column C and the cheapest available price in column D so you can decide whether to raise the budget.
Kill chain: search, rank by value, flag budget overruns, and highlight top picks
Search for the 3 cheapest in-stock options per category in column A within the budget in column B, write name, price, and retailer into columns C through E, rank the three options 1-3 by price in column F, and flag any row where all 3 options exceed the budget in column B with 'Over Budget' in column G.
One prompt handles the search, the ranking, and the budget alert.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open your procurement list. Ask it to find the cheapest in-stock options across retailers for every row in your category column. See also: Walmart Price Lookup for a Google Sheet Product List Using Composio Search or the Composio Search hub.