How to make a wholesale line sheet

A line sheet is an order form, not a brochure

Three documents get confused with each other. A lookbook sells the feeling: styled photography, a story, very few numbers. A catalogue shows the full range. A line sheet exists so a buyer can decide and order, which means it is mostly numbers laid out so they can be scanned in under a minute.

Buyers ask for the line sheet by name because it is the one they can act on. If you answer that request with a lookbook, you have bought yourself a second email at the exact moment interest was highest. Build the line sheet first, and treat the pretty version as optional.

The fields that belong on every row

One row per orderable item, and orderable is the operative word. If a product comes in three colours and a buyer can order the colours separately, that is three rows, because a single row would leave them guessing which price and which minimum applies.

GS1, the body that issues the identifiers behind retail barcodes, defines a trade item as something priced, ordered or invoiced at any point in the supply chain. That is a useful test for the level your sheet should describe: if it can be ordered on its own, it needs its own row and its own code.

• A photograph of the item on a plain background, large enough to recognise on a phone
• The product name exactly as you will invoice it
• Your SKU, which is your internal code and is yours to design
• The barcode or GTIN where you have one, which is the code the retailer's till needs
• Case or pack size, and whether the buyer must take a full case
• Wholesale price per unit, with the currency stated somewhere obvious
• Suggested retail price, so the buyer can see the margin without opening a calculator
• Size, weight or dimensions where they affect shelf space or shipping
• Materials, ingredients or compliance marks where your category requires them
• Availability: in stock, made to order, or an expected date

The terms block, written once

Every question a buyer asks before their first order is a term, not a product. Answering those once at the top of the sheet is faster to read than repeating them per row, and it stops the rows contradicting each other.

State the minimum order as a number with a unit, because "minimum order 500" is ambiguous and buyers will read it whichever way suits them. Count the lead time from a defined trigger, such as a confirmed order or a cleared payment, rather than from the day you happen to start work. Say who pays freight and from where.

If you sell through a business-to-business storefront as well as by email, the storefront rules and the sheet have to agree. Shopify's business-to-business catalogues, for example, carry quantity rules that limit how many units a customer can buy in one order and volume pricing that gives a price break at a quantity. A sheet that promises different minimums to the same buyer is a support conversation waiting to happen.

• Minimum first order, and the minimum on reorders if it differs
• Lead time, counted from a stated trigger
• Payment terms, including anything you require before dispatch
• Shipping terms, and who pays freight
• Damages and shortages: how long a buyer has to tell you, and what you do
• Order cut-off dates if the range is seasonal
• The dates the prices are effective from and held until

Set the wholesale price before you design the page

The wholesale price has to clear two tests at once. It has to leave you something after your landed cost, and it has to leave the retailer a margin they can live with at the suggested retail price you are printing beside it. A sheet that fails the second test looks complete and still gets no orders.

You will see the convention that retail is roughly double wholesale. Treat that as a sanity check rather than a rule: it moves with category, country and channel, and it says nothing about whether your own cost leaves room underneath. Work it out on your real landed cost, including the freight and packaging you will actually pay.

Whatever number you land on, only print it if you can hold it for the validity period on the sheet. Re-quoting a price a buyer has already shown to their own team is expensive in a way that discounting is not.

Work out what is left after every cost runs the wholesale arithmetic, so the price you print is one you have checked rather than one you have guessed.

Worked example: one row and the terms above it

Below is a single item written the way a buyer reads it. The point of the example is not the figures, which are invented, but how little the buyer has to ask you afterwards.

Send it so it opens

PDF is the safe default. It renders the same on every device, it cannot be edited by accident on the way, and buyers expect it. Keep the file small enough to clear a mail filter, which in practice means compressing the photographs rather than dropping them.

Name the file so it is findable in six months. Brand, the words line sheet, and the season or date beats a filename like final-v3. A buyer who saved your sheet in March and wants it in September will search for your brand name, and nothing else.

Keep a spreadsheet version ready as the second format. A buyer who is loading your range into a purchasing system cannot import a PDF, and being able to send a clean CSV the same day is a small advantage that costs you nothing to prepare in advance. A hosted link is the third option: it avoids attachment limits and lets you update in place, but some buyers cannot open external links from email, so lead with the attachment and offer the link beside it.

If you already sell on a business-to-business storefront, decide out loud which one is authoritative. The usual answer is that the storefront is live and the sheet is a summary of it, and saying so on the sheet prevents an argument about a price that changed.

Date it, version it, and check it before you attach it

Costs move, ranges sell out, and sheets get forwarded. An undated line sheet that reaches a new buyer six months later is a price you never agreed to and may not be able to honour. An effective date and a validity date turn that from a dispute into a reissue.

Keep the superseded versions rather than editing the live file quietly. When a buyer quotes a price back at you, the useful reply names which sheet they are holding.

The last pass before the file leaves your outbox is mechanical, and it is the one that catches the row with no price on it.

• Every row has a price, a pack size and a SKU
• The minimum order is a number with a unit attached
• The lead time counts from a stated trigger
• Payment and shipping terms appear once and do not contradict any row
• Prices carry an effective date and a validity date
• The photographs are the current product, not last season's
• The file opens and stays readable on a phone
• Your name, email and country are on the sheet itself, not only in the email

What a line sheet cannot do

It cannot make a badly matched shop into a buyer. A complete sheet sent to a retailer who serves a different customer at a different price point gets the same silence as an incomplete one, which is why the qualifying work comes first and the document comes second.

It is also not a contract or a substitute for one. Terms of trade, consumer-law obligations, labelling requirements and tax treatment differ by country and by category, and nothing here is legal, tax or accounting advice. The two facts cited on this page are narrow ones: what GS1 counts as a trade item, and how quantity rules and volume pricing behave on a Shopify business-to-business catalogue. Everything else is commercial convention, which means it is a starting point you are free to depart from with a reason.

Sources and definitions

• GS1: Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), checked September 8, 2026
• Shopify Help Center: Catalogs and pricing in B2B, checked September 8, 2026
• Shopify Help Center: Product details, checked September 8, 2026

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