Excel File to Postgres Database Datatype Formatting

I am trying to consume an Excel spreadsheet and write it out to a Postgres database table.  When I pull in the Excel sheet, I am seeing where everything is coming in as a string value from Excel.  I have some fields in the spreadsheet that are dates, times, and numbers (both integer and float/numeric (dollar amounts).  If I don't configure my Postgres table to be all VARCHAR data types, I get the following error when trying to write the numeric data via the writer: Record/Line:12 Record Rejected: Field: gross Value: 62.51 Datatype: NUMERIC Message: Could not convert variant of type (Null) into type (OleStr).  I have looked through the transformations, but I cannot find a way to set a numeric data format like you can a date format.
How can I convert those string values to numbers so I can use NUMERIC data types in the database and not have to use VARCHAR?

Hi Bill

Welcome to the forum.

Most likely all you need to do is to replace dot with comma. eg 6.96 => 6,96

This can be done using using replace transformation function
www.etl-tools.com/wiki/advanced-etl-proc...ons/strings/replace/

You might have some leading and trailing spaces you cannot see.
Use trim function for it
www.etl-tools.com/wiki/advanced-etl-proc...ctions/strings/trim/  

also get rid of any special characters $1,120,100.12 => 1120100,12