Choose identity before comparing rows.
Use a listing ID or another agreed key that remains stable across exports. Address text, price, status and days-on-market can all change or be reformatted, so they should not silently become the row identity.
Weekly property spreadsheet controls
When days-on-market changes, row deduplication can erase visit notes.
A weekly export can describe the same listing with a new days-on-market value, price or status. If the merge treats the whole row as identity, yesterday's visit note may disappear or land on the wrong property.
Safer merge contract: identify a property with one stable listing key, use changing fields as attributes, apply one written note-precedence rule, and send uncertain keys to review instead of guessing.
Separate current facts from carried context.
Take the current export as authority for current property fields. Treat the prior export as a source of retained context, such as the last visit note, rather than copying the whole old row forward.
Write the note-precedence rule.
A nonblank current note can replace the prior note. When the current note is blank and the key resolves uniquely, the prior note can be carried forward. The workbook should show which path produced the final note.
Hold ambiguous keys for review.
Missing IDs, duplicate IDs and one-to-many matches belong in an exception queue. Automatically choosing the first match can attach a private observation to the wrong property and hide the mistake.
Reconcile the weekly change set.
Count retained, updated, new, exited and review rows. Preserve source-row references and an output hash so the next weekly run can reproduce the same decisions or explain a correction.
Inspect before sharing data
The public workbook uses eight fictional properties and synthetic staff notes. It demonstrates three retained notes, one current-note override, one new listing, one exited listing and three review rows without using a property account or customer export.
Download the synthetic Excel proof · View the USD 79 fixed scope