Slightly different names, and summing values

I am compiling a sales report.
I have an spreadsheet that in Column A it has a list of customer names. A number of the customer names are only slightly different for example:
Nielsen Entertainment
AC Nielsen
AC Nielsen - USA..
and so forth. in columns to the left I have yearly sales figures.
For this report they are all basically the same company, so I want to sum up all the sales for a particular year (say 2008).
is there a simple way I can do this without having to go through and search for all the names?
can i write a program/script that says:
IF cell in column A has name=Nielsen, then take Value in Column G and sum and produce a single output of all sales done with that one company?
and have it run that down the entire spreadsheet?

A formula like such will sum values in G based on if A has Nielson within the string.

=Sumproduct(--Isnumber(Search("Nielson",$A$1:$A$1000)),$G$1:$G$1000)

adjust ranges to suit.

Note: "Nielson" can be replaced with a cell reference housing the string "Nielson"

Originally Posted by scootermclean

Fantastic, that is amazing.
Thank you very much.

I want to learn as much about this as possible, I was wondering if you could briefly explain the formula.

I think I understand it for the most part, sumproduct runs, is prompted to search for Nielsen in Column A, if true, then sum value in Column G.
is a true returned as a 1? so the sumproduct just multiples value in G by 1?
Also, what do the '--' mean prior to Isnumber?

Thanks!

You pretty much got it...

The Isnumber(Search()) argument in the Sumproduct formula returns arrays of Trues and Falses. The -- converts those to 1's and 0's so that the multiplication you described above can be performed.

See here for more on this use of Sumproduct... a good read!

http://www.xldynamic.com/source/xld.SUMPRODUCT.html