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Pricing

This page outlines some methods of implementing pricing within the system.

Pricebands
A complete alternative set of prices that can be selected for specific customers or stores. If you have "retail" and "trade" pricing you would typically use a Priceband.
Kits/Combos
A pricing method that allows combinations of different products to be assigned a price when purchased together.
Specific Overrides (aka PriceMaps)
A method of providing specific pricing override and special "rules" for products/stores/customers. These rules are often used to implement short term contract pricing.

How Pricing is Decided

When an item is added to a sale, the steps below are performed. This is a simplified description, for a full technical description refer to /docs/pos/posc/tech_pricing.htm

  1. If the product is marked "Prompt Price" or "Variable Priced", a screen is displayed and the price is requested.
  2. A check is performed to see if this product could be part of a kit or combo.
  3. If the product has modifiers, these are prompted and internal prices updated to reflect any modifier adjustments.
  4. Any sale wide discounting in effect is attached to the sale
  5. (P1822) If Price smearing is in effect (setting SalePriceSmear, default is off) the price is adjusted to the most recent saleline. Price smearing is a function used to ensure that a price set on a product is also applied to any more of those items that might be sold in the same sale.
  6. QtyDiscouts are loaded and applied.

Specific Overrides

Specific override pricing allows you to enter the special case pricing exceptions that always occur at some stage. This might be a short term special offer, which can be tied to a customer or store (or both).

An override does not change the current price of the item as shown in the products list, rather it provides an adjustment selected when the product is sold. You should not use overrides to provide permanent price changes, change the base price in the product.

Product ABC
Base Price $8.50

No Override

Sells at $8.50

Product ABC
Base Price $8.50

Override 10% discount

Sells at $7.65

When creating an override, you can specify any of the following selection criteria:

Product Select a single product. The override only applies if this exact product is sold.
Customer Select a single customer. The override only applies if this exact customer is purchasing the item. Customers should ideally be selected before selling items that might include overrides. If you are creating prices specifically for a customer(s) for all products, you might wish to use pricebands, which provide an alternative pricing schedule.
Department Select a department, so that all products belonging to this department are valid for this override.
Location/Store Select a single store for which this override is to apply.

You can also include the following restrictions:

Once an override is selected to be applied, it can either apply a fixed price, or a percentage discount to the current price. Fixed prices must be greater than zero. Percentage discounts must be greater than zero and less than or equal to 100%.

If you create an override and then no longer wish it to apply before it reaches the end date, alter the end date to the current date. Do not delete or reuse overrides, as they are likely to be required for future reporting and audit purposes.

Price Overrides are entered by selecting "Prices" from the stock home page and uploading an Excel spreadsheeet with pricing. See /docs/bulk_excel_load.htm for details about loading Excel spreadsheets - the examples tab has price override examples

Technical Advanced Technical Info: Reading Overrides | Edit Overrides


Example

Create a pricing structure that grants customer #15 a 20% discount on all products, except for product number 6, which should remain at full retail.

Solution

  1. Create an override with the following selection criteria:
    • Product = 0
    • Customer = 15
    • Department = 0
    • Location = 0;
    Set the Priority to 1, and the pricing effect to be 20% discount.

  2. Create another override with the following selection criteria:
    • Product = 6
    • Customer = 15
    • Department = 0
    • Location = 0;
    Set the Priority to 2, and the pricing effect to be 0% discount.

This structure ensures that when product number 6 is sold, the higher priority "0%" discount is applied first. All other products will select the top override and receive the 20% discount.

A complete alternative set of prices that can be selected for specific customers or stores. If you have "retail" and "trade" pricing you would typically use a Priceband.

Pricebands can be defined in two ways

  1. An "Actual" price band where you enter actual prices for each item. This method allows you to set prices to whatever level you wish, per item.
  2. A "Calculated" price band where prices are derived from the base retail price. Using our example, if trade price is always 15% less than retail, you can use a calculated price band.

In multi store environments the timing of when price changes should be applied can be problematic. This page explains the distributed and authorised price change model. Most retailers will not need this model. The distributed price change model allows individual stores to set their own prices, but still follow corporate guidelines.

When to use distributed pricing

Example

What happens in this environment when head office changes the price on a product?