Eliminating Sold Inventory From The Inventory List

I am not an excel whiz, so I will need layman's terms if possible. I may have found a solution to my problem under another thread, but I couldn't understand it. I have only briefly worked with macros, a very long time ago. Here goes...

I have an inventory list that has not been updated for sales of the inventory, only for purchases. I have sales lists, generally by month, in separate spreadsheets. I am looking for a simple, efficient way of either eliminating or at least matching up the data in the sales list to the inventory list in order to remove sold items from inventory (on paper). I am hoping the result will be a fairly accurate inventory list, and related value, so that a physical inventory count won't be necessary at this time. Obviously I could copy all of the sales info into one spreadsheet, sort by inventory number, then manually delete all sold items from the inventory listing. I am REALLY hoping there is a better option.