Structure of Price Lists
FirstOffice allows you to assign different Prices to individual Items so that each Price is associated with a particular Price List. For example, many retail outlets have different prices for their retail and trade Customers, or different retail and educational prices. You might then have separate retail, trade and educational Price Lists, each of which is available to the appropriate kind of Customer. When you enter a Customer in an Order or Invoice, the appropriate Price List will be used and so the correct prices will be selected automatically.
In planning such a price structure, follow these steps:
- Enter the Items with their Base Prices, using the Item register.
- Define Price Formulae, using the Price Formula register in the Sales Ledger. These are the mechanism by which the different prices are calculated. In our example, the retail price might be the same as the Base Price, the trade price might represent a discount of 20% and an educational price might represent a discount of 30%. A Price Formula record would be set up for each.
- Define each Price List (in our example, retail, trade and educational) using the Price Lists setting in the Sales Ledger. Attach Items or Item Groups to the Price Lists with an appropriate Price Formula. For example, in the educational Price List, all Items that are likely to be sold to such Customers should be attached, using the 30% discount Price Formula. Effectively, you are defining the relationship between the Items and the Price List here.
- For each Price List, calculate the Prices of the Items using the 'Calculate Price Lists' Maintenance function in the Sales Ledger. For each Item on each Price List, this function applies the specified Price Formula and saves the result in a record in the Price register. In our example, for each Item three Price records will be created: one each containing the retail, trade and education prices.
The relationship between the Items, the Price Lists and the Price records makes it of critical importance that you run the 'Calculate Price Lists' function whenever the Base Price of an Item changes or, if you have Price Lists in various Currencies, whenever the Exchange Rate alters. Otherwise, the Price records could soon lose their relationship to the Base Price of their Items, resulting in you quoting out-of-date prices to your Customers. If you specify a Price List in an Order or Invoice, FirstOffice searches in the Price register for the appropriate, and unique, record representing the particular Item for that Price List.
- You can now assign a Price List to each Customer and/or Customer Category. When you enter an Order or Invoice for each Customer, prices will be taken from the specified Price List automatically. If you sell an Item that is not on the appropriate Price List, the Base Price will be used.
- Once calculated, you can print Price Lists, or export them to disk for incorporation into your company's publicity material. Print Price Lists using the report of the same name, available in the Sales Support module and in the Sales Ledger.
Please follow the links in steps 2-4 for more details.
