How to Compare Korean Vendor
Quotations in Excel
A Reddit user on r/procurement recently asked: "How do you compare supplier quotes? Still manual? Excel filters/macros? RFP software or ERP tools?" The question hit a nerve because it exposed what procurement teams in Korea deal with every day: five suppliers send five vendor quotations (견적서), each in its own layout, and someone still has to retype every line item into a comparison spreadsheet by hand.
The bottleneck isn't the comparison logic. It's getting the data out of the PDFs. This guide covers what a Korean vendor quotation actually contains, why standardizing the intake step changes everything, and how to extract line-item data from any supplier's 견적서 into one Excel comparison table — without retyping a single cell.
Key Takeaways
- Template-based extraction tools ask you to draw a box around each field on a document and then you open the next supplier's 견적서 and every field has moved to a different position.
- Korean vendor quotations sit outside the tax code with zero required fields or layouts so every supplier generates a structurally unique document and template rules break at supplier two.
- ImageToTable.ai reads by field meaning instead of page position so your comparison columns work on every supplier's document without a single coordinate definition.
Why Korean Vendor Quotes Resist Standardization
A vendor quotation (견적서, literally "estimate document") is the proposal a supplier sends in response to your request for quotation (견적요청서). It lists the items they can supply, at what unit price, in what quantity, under what terms. Unlike a tax invoice (세금계산서) — which is governed by Article 32 of Korea's VAT Act (부가가치세법 제32조) and transmitted to the National Tax Service in a regulated electronic format — a 견적서 has no legally mandated structure. It is not a tax document. No law says what fields it must contain, what order they must appear in, or even whether it must exist at all.
That regulatory vacuum is the root cause of the extraction problem. In a typical Korean B2B transaction, the document chain flows: 견적서 → 발주서 (purchase order) → 거래명세서 (transaction statement) → 세금계산서 (tax invoice). The 견적서 sits at the very front of this chain — the least regulated, most variable, and most critical for comparison decisions. A supplier using 더존 Smart A generates a 견적서 with item tables in landscape orientation and the company stamp (직인) across the header. Another using 이카운트 (ECOUNT ERP) produces a portrait layout with line-item rows nested inside merged header cells. A third sends an Excel file they built themselves in 2013. All three are valid. There's no template to be wrong against — because no template exists.
This isn't a Korean idiosyncrasy. It's the natural consequence of a document that sits outside the tax code. And it means that every time your procurement team receives a batch of 견적서, the data you need lives in a different physical location on each page. Template-based OCR tools — which rely on defining coordinates or pattern-matching a fixed layout — break at supplier #2.
What's Actually on a Korean Vendor Quotation
Format chaos aside, every 견적서 answers the same set of questions — just at different coordinates. Understanding what fields exist, and what they mean, is the first step to designing a comparison that works across suppliers.
| Field | Korean Name | What It Means for Comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Quote date | 견적일자 | When the quote was issued — determines whether it's still within its validity window |
| Validity period | 유효기간 | How long the quoted prices hold — typically 7–30 days; a quote past its 유효기간 requires reissue |
| Supplier info | 공급자 | Business name, registration number (사업자등록번호), address, contact |
| Item name | 품목명 | Description of each line item being quoted |
| Specification | 규격 | Dimensions, model numbers, or technical specs — critical when comparing like-for-like across suppliers |
| Quantity | 수량 | Number of units quoted |
| Unit price | 단가 | Price per unit — the core comparison metric |
| Supply value (subtotal) | 공급가액 | Line total before VAT (= Quantity × Unit Price, but may include discounts) |
| VAT | 부가세 | 10% of 공급가액 in B2B transactions — typically shown separately (별도) |
| Total amount | 합계금액 | 공급가액 + 부가세 — the full amount payable |
| Payment terms | 결제조건 | Due date, payment method, deposit requirements |
| Delivery terms | 납기 / 인도조건 | Delivery date, location, Incoterms if applicable |
| Remarks | 비고 | Warranty conditions, validity notes, exclusions |
One field that warrants special attention: the VAT split. In Korean B2B transactions, it is standard practice to show 공급가액 and 부가세 separately (별도). A 견적서 that lists only a single total without breaking out VAT should raise a flag — discussions on Clien.net confirm that B2B buyers in Korea expect this breakdown, and suppliers who refuse to provide it are often seen as trying to obscure their actual pricing structure. When you extract 견적서 data for comparison, always capture 공급가액 and 부가세 as separate fields. If a supplier shows only an all-inclusive total, you'll need to back-calculate: 공급가액 = Total ÷ 1.1.
Step 1: Gather Quotes in Any Format
Stop asking suppliers for a specific format. In practice, you'll receive 견적서 as:
- A PDF generated from the supplier's ERP — clean but locked inside a page layout you can't copy-paste from reliably
- An Excel file — easier to work with but still requires manual cell-by-cell transfer into your master comparison spreadsheet
- A scanned image or phone photo — common with smaller suppliers who print, stamp, and scan their 견적서 back
- An email body screenshot — informal quotes sent as text in an email, captured by the recipient
Collect all of them into a single folder. The file name doesn't matter for extraction — name them by supplier if it helps you stay organized, but the tool reads the content, not the file name. Support includes PDF, JPG, PNG, WebP, and AVIF — so even a smartphone photo of a handwritten 견적서 on a supplier's desk works.
Step 2: Define Your Comparison Columns
This is where the extraction approach diverges from template-based tools. Instead of telling the system where to look on each supplier's document — "Supplier A's unit price is in table row 5, column 3" — you tell it what to look for. You define column names, and the AI locates the corresponding values on each document by understanding what they mean, regardless of where the supplier placed them.
This mechanism — Custom Column Extraction — is the reverse of how traditional OCR works. Template tools need you to draw a box around each field because they match by coordinates. Custom Column Extraction works by semantic understanding: the AI reads the document, comprehends that "₩45,000" next to "단가" means unit price, and places it in your "Unit Price" column — whether that "₩45,000" appears in a table cell, a paragraph, or handwritten on a scanned form.
For a Korean vendor quotation comparison, define columns like:
| Column Name | What It Captures |
|---|---|
| Supplier Name | 공급자 business name — identifies which quote each row belongs to |
| Item Name | 품목명 — the product or service being quoted |
| Specification | 규격 — dimensions, model, grade |
| Quantity | 수량 — number of units |
| Unit Price | 단가 — price per unit in KRW |
| Supply Value | 공급가액 — line total before VAT |
| VAT | 부가세 — 10% tax amount |
| Quote Date | 견적일자 — date the quote was issued |
| Validity Period | 유효기간 — how long the price holds |
| Payment Terms | 결제조건 — payment due, method, deposit |
If you need computed values — total including VAT for suppliers who only show 공급가액, or a per-unit price from a line total — you can add Computed Columns by writing the calculation directly into the column name. For example, a column named "Grand Total (Supply Value + VAT)" instructs the AI to perform that arithmetic during extraction and output the result, so your spreadsheet receives comparison-ready numbers, not raw data waiting for Excel formulas.
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Step 3: Extract Line Items into One Spreadsheet
With columns defined, upload all your supplier 견적서 files at once. Batch processing means you drag in Supplier A's ERP PDF, Supplier B's scanned form, Supplier C's email screenshot — all in one upload — and the AI processes each document independently, then merges the results into a single output table with the column structure you defined.
What happens under the hood: For each document, the AI reads every page in sequence. A multi-page 견적서 with item tables on page 1 and payment terms on page 3 gets read as one continuous document — not page-by-page silos. When it encounters "₩2,450,000" next to "공급가액" on Supplier A's page 2 header and "공급가액 2,450,000원" in Supplier B's paragraph text, it recognizes both as the same data point and places each in the "Supply Value" column of the respective row.
The output is one spreadsheet where each row is a line item from a supplier's 견적서, each column is a field you defined, and the source format is no longer visible — because the structure comes from your column definitions, not from the supplier's layout choices.
Time comparison: Processing five 견적서 from five suppliers, each with roughly 15 line items, means approximately 75 data cells to extract. Manual entry — opening each PDF, finding each value, typing it into the right cell — takes 30–45 minutes of focused work for even an experienced procurement team member. AI extraction completes the same task in the time it takes to upload the files plus a few seconds of processing per document. The gap widens with every additional supplier or line item.
Step 4: Build Your Side-by-Side Comparison
The extracted data arrives as a flat table. Now you transform it into a decision tool. The comparison structure depends on your evaluation priorities, but here are three approaches that work for Korean B2B procurement:
Price-focused comparison: Pivot the extracted data so suppliers become columns and items become rows. For each item (품목), you see every supplier's unit price in one row. Add a =MIN() formula to flag the lowest price per item, and conditional formatting to highlight winners. If you're comparing 공급가액 across suppliers, remember that VAT should be excluded from the base comparison — compare pre-tax values and then verify each supplier's VAT is correctly calculated at 10%.
Weighted scoring: When price isn't the only factor, add columns for delivery lead time (납기), payment terms (결제조건), and supplier reliability, then score each on a 1–5 scale. Multiply by weights that reflect your priorities — a common starting point in Korean procurement is 40% price, 25% delivery, 20% payment terms, 15% quality/spec compliance. The sum identifies the strongest overall supplier, not just the cheapest.
Total cost of ownership (TCO): The quoted 단가 is only part of the cost. Add columns for shipping (운송비), minimum order quantity (최소주문수량), and payment schedule — a supplier quoting ₩5,000/unit with 50% upfront payment and 60-day delivery may cost more in working capital than one quoting ₩5,500/unit with net-30 payment and next-week delivery.
Korea's own public procurement system — KONEPS (나라장터), which processes roughly two-thirds of all public procurement and saves an estimated $8 billion annually in administrative costs — evaluates bids on a structured scoring framework with technical capability weighted at 80–90 points and bid price at 10–20 points. The private sector doesn't need that level of formality, but the principle — price is one input among several — is worth adopting.
Handling Korean Format Specifics
Korean business documents carry a few format conventions that affect extraction accuracy and comparison logic:
VAT 별도 vs 포함. In Korean B2B, VAT is almost always shown separately (별도). A 견적서 will list 공급가액 (supply value), then 부가세 (VAT = 공급가액 × 10%), then 합계금액 (total including VAT). If a supplier sends a quote with only a single total and no VAT breakdown, you're likely dealing with a B2C-oriented supplier or a sole proprietor under the simplified taxation regime (간이과세자) who cannot issue tax invoices. Always extract these as separate columns — comparing totals that mix pre-tax and post-tax values produces misleading results.
Currency formatting. Korean won amounts use commas as thousand separators (₩1,250,000) and may appear with or without the 원 suffix. The AI recognizes both formats and outputs clean numeric values. When comparing with non-Korean suppliers, note that ₩1,000 is roughly $0.70–0.75 USD (as of mid-2026) — the tool extracts the numeric value; currency conversion is up to your spreadsheet logic.
Date formats. Korean 견적서 typically use YYYY-MM-DD or YYYY년 MM월 DD일 format. The AI standardizes all dates during extraction, so a quote dated "2026-06-12" from Supplier A and "2026년 6월 12일" from Supplier B both land as the same date value in your "Quote Date" column.
Business registration numbers. Every Korean business has a 10-digit 사업자등록번호 (format: XXX-XX-XXXXX). If you're comparing quotes for compliance or vendor registration purposes, extract this field. It's the unique identifier that links a 견적서 to a specific legal entity — useful when the supplier's trading name (상호) doesn't match their registered name.
Item codes (품목코드). Some suppliers use internal product codes instead of — or in addition to — descriptive item names. A 견적서 might list "ELC-4200B" with no further description. If your internal procurement system uses different codes, the extracted data serves as the bridge: you get the supplier's code, and your spreadsheet does the mapping via VLOOKUP against your master item list.
For a deeper look at Korean transaction documents, see our guides on extracting Korean transaction statements (거래명세서) to Excel — the document that follows the 견적서 in the procurement chain — and extracting Korean tax invoices (세금계산서) for accounting, which covers the legally regulated endpoint of the same document flow.
FAQ
Can AI extract data from a handwritten Korean 견적서?
Yes. The vision model reads both printed and handwritten Korean text, including cursive handwriting. A small supplier who hand-writes their 견적서 on a company form and scans it back produces extractable data. Accuracy on handwriting is lower than printed text — expect discrepancies on densely written fields or unclear numerals — but the structure (items, quantities, prices) typically comes through cleanly because those values are written in isolation, not embedded in running text.
What if a supplier sends an Excel file — do I still need extraction?
No, but the comparison workflow benefits from a unified pipeline. If three suppliers send PDFs and two send Excel files, batch-uploading all five produces a single merged output table with the same column structure. Manually copying the two Excel rows into your comparison sheet while extracting the three PDFs via AI is workable, but splitting the workflow introduces the exact manual friction the process is designed to eliminate. Upload everything together — the AI handles each format independently.
Does this work with 견적서 that span multiple pages?
Yes. Multi-page documents are read in page order as a single continuous file. Line items split across pages — common when a supplier has a long item table that spans page 1 and page 2 — are recognized as belonging to the same document. A validity period printed on page 3 and unit prices on page 1 all land in the same output row for that supplier.
How does VAT extraction handle inconsistencies between suppliers?
The AI extracts whatever VAT value appears on the document. If Supplier A shows 부가세 as a separate line item, it lands in your "VAT" column. If Supplier B doesn't show VAT at all — common with exempt suppliers (면세사업자) in industries like healthcare or education — the "VAT" column will be empty for that row. Your comparison spreadsheet should check: if VAT is blank, verify whether the supplier is 면세; if not, flag the quote for follow-up before using it in a pre-tax comparison.
Can I extract the same fields from a Korean 견적서 and an English quotation in the same batch?
Yes. Custom Column Extraction is language-agnostic. If you define a column named "Unit Price," the AI finds ₩45,000 on a Korean document and $32.50 on an English one because it understands both represent the same concept. The output table won't distinguish by language — each value lands in the column you named. For cross-currency comparison, add a separate currency conversion step in your spreadsheet after extraction.
From Data Entry to Decision
Vendor quotation comparison is the moment in procurement where manual work does the most damage. Every minute spent retyping line items from a PDF into a spreadsheet is a minute not spent asking whether Supplier B's five-day-faster delivery time is worth Supplier A's 8% lower unit price, or whether a 30-day validity window means you should lock in the price now before raw material costs shift.
The extraction step — the mechanical bridge between a supplier's document and your comparison table — is what keeps procurement teams at 60–70% administrative overhead. Remove that step, and the comparison itself becomes the work, not the reward for finishing data entry.