Alibaba Spreadsheet: Shop the Finds or Track Your Suppliers

Which "Alibaba spreadsheet" are you looking for?

Type the phrase into Google and the suggestions pull in opposite directions: "alibaba spreadsheet reselling" and "template" on one side, "clothes", "cologne" and "reps free" on the other. Bing adds "vendor spreadsheet" and "format". That split is the whole story. Some people want a list of factories to buy stock from; others want a list of individual pieces to buy for themselves. The right sheet, and the right place to buy, is different for each.

Verdict: Buying for yourself: use a finds list and an agent. Buying stock to sell: build a supplier sheet and keep every payment on Alibaba.com.

Which Alibaba sites sell what?

"Alibaba" is a group, not a single shop. Alibaba Group was founded on 28 June 1999 in Hangzhou by Jack Ma and 17 co-founders, and it now runs several marketplaces with very different buyers in mind. Most spreadsheet links you will meet point to one of them — or to Weidian, which is not part of the group at all.

Launch years from Wikipedia's Alibaba Group article. Weidian is run by a separate company, Koudai.

In March 2023 Alibaba split itself into six business groups under a plan it called "1+6+N"; Taobao and Tmall now sit together in one of them, and Alibaba.com and AliExpress sit under Alibaba International Digital Commerce. For a buyer, the practical line is simpler: Alibaba.com and AliExpress will sell to you directly; 1688, Taobao, Tmall and Weidian mostly will not, which is why agents exist.

Verdict: If a spreadsheet link starts with 1688.com, item.taobao.com or weidian.com, you need an agent. If it starts with alibaba.com or aliexpress.com, you can check out yourself.

What does Trade Assurance cover on an Alibaba.com order?

Trade Assurance is the reason a supplier sheet should say "paid on platform: yes" in every row. Alibaba.com's money-back policy promises a refund when an order does not ship as agreed, goes missing, or arrives defective, incorrect or damaged. The catch is the clock: you have 30 days from delivery to apply, or 60 days on Enterprise and Enterprise Pro memberships.

Source: Alibaba.com Trade Assurance money-back policy page.

Two habits make those promises easier to use. First, put the specification in the order itself — fabric weight, colour codes, size chart, packaging — because "not as described" is only as strong as the description. Second, open samples and first shipments within days, not weeks; a 30-day window closes quickly when a pallet sits unopened in a garage.

Verdict: A supplier who asks you to pay by bank transfer or a payment app outside Alibaba.com is asking you to give up Trade Assurance. Say no, or drop them from the sheet.

Which shopping agents are working in September 2026?

A finds list is only as good as the agent you paste it into, and 2026 has been hard on agents. CNFans closed in August. AllChinaBuy's homepage has shown nothing but a maintenance notice about a hacker attack. MuleBuy and ACBuy have both been the subject of shutdown or raid reports that we could not confirm either way. Of the 20 agents we track, 16 were working normally when we checked, 2 had conflicting or worrying signals, and 2 was offline.

Sources: each agent's own website, rep.tools status write-ups (Aug 31, 2026) and Trustpilot. Status can change in days; open the agent's site yourself before you top up a balance.

Verdict: Before paying a deposit anywhere, check the agent loads, accepts a pasted link and has recent reviews. If any of the three fails, use another agent — every find on this site works with more than one.

The agent status board tracks the same list with filters, and the spreadsheet index compares fees and free storage side by side.

How do you build an Alibaba supplier spreadsheet?

Shared supplier lists on Discord and Google Drive go stale fast — shops close, MOQs change, and a price quoted in spring means little by autumn. A sheet you keep yourself, with a date on every row, stays useful. Our free CSV template opens in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers and has 22 columns; these are the ones that matter most:

1. Listing URL, not a search result. The full product address, so you can find the exact item again.
2. MOQ and two price tiers. The headline price is usually the top-quantity tier; record what you would actually pay.
3. Sample cost, date and verdict. A sample is the cheapest quality check you will ever buy.
4. Lead time quoted vs actual. The gap between the two tells you how much to trust the next quote.
5. Shipping and duty per unit. Since the US ended its $800 duty-free allowance, duty belongs in every row.
6. Landed cost per unit. Unit price plus shipping plus duty — the template adds these up for you.
7. Paid through Trade Assurance? A simple Y/N that tells you which orders are protected.
8. Last checked. Anything older than three months needs a fresh message to the supplier before you reorder.

The same sheet works for 1688, Taobao and Weidian if you fill in the "agent used" and "agent fee" columns, which lets you compare an Alibaba.com quote with the agent route on the same landed-cost line.

Every agent has its own link format, fee rules and storage limit, so the same find can cost noticeably different amounts once it reaches your door. Each page below has its own set of finds, plus the facts that matter for that agent or marketplace this month: whether it is working, what it charges, how long it stores parcels, and what its reviewers complain about.

The marketplace pages answer a different question: whether to buy on AliExpress, DHgate, Temu or Amazon directly, or to find the piece on Weidian, Taobao or 1688 and route it through an agent. Direct marketplaces usually win on buyer protection; the agent route usually wins on choice and on seeing the actual item before it ships.

What will import duty add to an order from China in 2026?

This is the line most first-time buyers forget, and it changed a lot in the past eighteen months. The US removed its duty-free allowance for small parcels entirely, the EU began charging a flat €3 per item category on parcels under €150 in July 2026, and the UK has confirmed its £135 relief will go. For supplier orders the same rules decide whether a product is still profitable.

Sources: CBP summary via importcostcalculator.com, Council of the EU (Dec 12, 2025), GOV.UK, CBSA, Australian Taxation Office.

Verdict: Put estimated duty into your landed cost before you compare suppliers or agents. A cheaper unit price rarely survives a bigger duty bill.

The landed-cost estimator runs these rules for a basket you enter, and the country guides for the US, the UK and Germany go into couriers and handling fees.

How is this Alibaba spreadsheet checked?

Most spreadsheets you'll find are a Google Sheet of a few thousand pasted links, and a good share of them rot within months. We work the other way round: fewer finds, each one checked, and the status of every agent re-checked monthly.

The finds. We pulled 600 listings from repbuysheet.com for this site. Ten were duplicates. Thirty-five were removed because the lead photo belonged to a different listing than the link — the classic "that's not what I ordered" trap. Two with prices under ¥10 were obvious listing errors. After cleaning names and dropping vague entries like "Design Hoodie", 553 listings remained, and the ones that can be clearly described appear as cards across the site.

Prices. Dollars first, yuan second, both as the catalog shows them on the day we checked. Your agent will quote its own exchange rate and add domestic shipping inside China, so expect its total to differ by a few percent.

Photos. The images are the seller's own listing photos, not QC photos. Your agent photographs the real item when it reaches the warehouse; judge the item on those before you approve shipping.

Prefer to skip the agent step?

Send us a photo or link on WhatsApp. We quote the item and delivery to your country, share QC photos before dispatch, and pass on tracking once it leaves China.

💬 Open a WhatsApp chat

Reading this on a laptop? Point your phone camera at the code.

Verdict: Shortlist here, compare in the catalog, decide on your agent's QC photos.