Success Story

Case Study: How a World-Leading British Tableware Ceramics Manufacturer Automatically Updates Prices in InDesign Product Catalogs Using a Custom InDesign Extension from T+S

Producing a 500-page product catalog in Adobe InDesign — containing thousands of prices — is already a race against the clock. But when you need to update hundreds of those prices, staying on a schedule can feel impossible.

Imagine a British ceramic tableware brand renowned globally for its premium collections and trusted by hospitality professionals. Its product catalog must reflect the same excellence: Every price — from mugs to plates — must be correct and current.

A custom InDesign extension from T+S does the heavy lifting of updating prices. As a result, the tableware brand has realized:

• Up-to-date prices for every product — no more price errors.
• Huge time savings to update prices — minutes instead of weeks.
• Consistently met deadlines — even with last-minute price updates.

Let’s look deeper into this real world example of how personal support from T+S contributed to these efficient results.

Before the InDesign extension: prices in the catalog were updated manually

Prices are stored in the ERP system, but updating the InDesign catalog meant manually transferring thousands of prices each year — a process prone to errors and time-consuming fixes. Worse, with multiple graphic designers editing simultaneously, designers and management often worked at cross purposes, leaving critical price updates overlooked.

A graphic designer found T+S online in the search for a better way, then reached out.

Conversation with T+S: automation for handling routine price updates

In its first discussion with T+S, the graphic design team was skeptical. Updating prices automatically in an InDesign catalog in mere minutes sounded too good to be true.

“If it works, this will be a real game-changer.”

After viewing a price update demo from T+S, however, the managing director was convinced.

The solution: a custom InDesign extension to automatically update prices in an InDesign catalog

T+S developed an InDesign extension to automatically update prices directly in InDesign.

The workflow using the InDesign extension keeps every price update cycle on track:

• The ERP system generates a Microsoft Excel (.xlsx) or CSV file.
• Prices from the Excel file are imported into the InDesign extension.
• Prices in the entire InDesign catalog are compared to prices in internal memory of the extension.
• Prices in the product catalog are exchanged for new updated ones from the Excel file as needed.
• Color coding facilitates quality control: green, yellow, or red coding in the InDesign document indicates matches with updates, matches, or no match found in the Excel file.

The result: updated prices in minutes, not weeks

Manually comparing and changing prices used to take several days. Now, the InDesign extension does the job in a few minutes. When new prices become available, the entire InDesign product catalog can be automatically updated with current prices, even shortly before a print deadline.

• Price updates in minutes, not weeks
• Reliable — no mistakes introduced by hand
• Current prices at all times — no changes are missed or overlooked
• Full control over all price changes in the InDesign catalog — transparent
• Far less stress
• Prices can be updated anytime — just import new prices and re-run the extension (plugin)

Price updates: automated publishing workflows for speed, flexibility, and reliability

Today’s markets are unpredictable and highly volatile, often warranting the need for more frequent price updates.

If you regularly update prices in product catalogs, price lists, product lists, brochures, menus, or other sales literature or marketing collateral maintained in InDesign, now is the time to have a look at your workflows. Publishing processes can often be sped up with a custom InDesign extension from T+S.

Beyond price updates: build custom intelligent workflows to automate tasks in InDesign

Price updates are not the only automation possibility. Many tasks and workflows that are manual can be automated:

• Update or exchange article numbers, including article numbers in tables
• Transfer data from Microsoft Excel into Adobe InDesign automatically
• Integrate data from other systems into InDesign
• Create complex tables and layouts, including price tables
• Populate pages with XML, JSON, or CSV data — or connect to your ERP system directly via API
• Place, replace, crop, and adjust images
• Produce personalized documents with targeted content for the individual recipient
• Intelligently insert advertisements into documents
• Combine AI with InDesign — generate text with ChatGPT or another LLM and place it into InDesign
• Automate batch exports to PDF, PNG or IDML
• Prepare files for printing, automate pre-press workflows

T+S has over 18 years of experience in automating Adobe InDesign to update prices, but also to systematically integrate InDesign with various data sources to speed up publishing workflows reliably and repeatedly. Our personalized service keeps your operations productive and moving forward.

Spend more time on content and design quality and less on tedious manual processes and operational work.

Take back your time with full control — using a custom InDesign extension from T+S.