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Overview
Price lists facilitate product pricing strategy and represent an independent data structure which allows to enter prices for SKU code that have not yet been set up in PIM. This gives flexibility in managing prices without worrying about product data and plan ahead by configuring the active time frame.
At the fundamental level price list consist of many price records. Each record represents list and sale prices of a SKU at particular moment in time for a given quantity. To be a little bit more specific and bring in some of the terminology here are some details on the properties of price record:
| Property | Mandatory | Examples | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| SKU code |  | 701423-L31 | SKU code that corresponds to SKU in PIM Note this relationship is weak, which means SKU code does not necessarily have corresponding SKU that exists in PIM |
| Quantity | | 1 | Price record activation quantity (quantity tier). For example quantity of 1 means that list/sale prices are available for given SKU when 1 or more items are in cart. Quantity 10 would mean that customer has to add at least 10 items of this SKU to activate this price |
| List price | | 9.99 | The price of 1 unit of SKU for given quantity tier It is recommended to align list price across all price records for SKU in a given period |
| Sale price |  | 8.99 | Sale price of 1 unit of SKU for given quantity tier. Should be less than list price Sale price is optional |
| Valid from | | 01-Jan-2016 23:59 | Activation time of this price record. Optional and can be left blank, which indicates that record is active from beginning of time. |
| Valid to | | 10-Jan-2016 23:59 | De-activation time of this price record. Optional and can be left blank, which indicates that record will be always active after it had activated. |
| Tags | | xmas summer2016 | Tag can be used by business user to group together price records belonging to a specific price campaign, such as Christmas or Summer sales |
In addition to basic information there are some optional advanced configurations:
| Property | Examples | Description | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Policy | COST_Main VIP | Policy allow to mark given price record with special access. This is very effective to hide prices from common customers (e.g. only VIP customers should see this price) or all customers (e.g. keep track of internal prices such as "buy in" or "cost" prices, which set basis for price rules
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Fulfilment centre
| Main | Limits this price only to items ordered from specific fulfilment centre.
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Price upon request
| true | Hides the price in frontend so that customers cannot see it. This allows to make the product visible without disclosing the actual price.
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Offer price
| true | Allows to display list price as sale price (i.e. visually styled as sale price)
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Each price record can provide its own combination of properties to facilitate various use cases. For example:
Base list prices provided by price records with list price at quantity 1, no sale price and no from/to time to indicate that it is always available. It is recommended to keep single base list price record for each SKU available in shop to ensure default price is always available.
Warning Products with a base price will not appear in frontend unless specified as "Showroom" in the inventory record - Sale prices provided by price records with list price and sale price at quantity 1 and may optionally define from/to time period. There can be many sale price records with different from/to periods, even when timeframes overlap. The platform will automatically deduce best customer value sale price for current point in time for current customer.
- Multi buy prices following the same rules as sale prices and allow to take them one step further by also checking the current quantity in customer shopping cart to provide bulk discounts. Major difference in multi buy price record is that quantity tier is greater than one.
Cost (or buy in) prices that use
policy naming convention (e.g. COST_Main), which allow to track the cost of the product to the business and are useful for automatic price generation and reportingTextbox Body COST_[fulfilment centre code] Info Cost prices are automatically resolved and saved with placed orders enabling generation of profit/loss reports and aiding any other audit, export or reporting function - Special prices that use a mixture of policy and fulfilment centre configurations to provide special prices available to a specific customer niche.
Some use cases
Topic of pricing strategy is quite difficult due to multitude of influential factors, so it is probably easier to go though a simple examples to bring some context to the discussion.
'Summer campaign' example
Consider the following typical set of business requirements:
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Note that business user enters the 'summer campaign' prices long before the campaign starts and does not need to make any adjustments during the campaign, which gives freedom to plan ahead. Another interesting point is that JulyXX and AugXX where overlapping with SummerXX, so if for some reason business decided to withdraw 50% discount in August only that record would need to be removed and SummerXX sale at 10% would still remain thus preventing disagreement with the original campaign. This layered approach allows to create long term and short term pricing strategies as well as enable quick changes according to business needs in this rapidly changing and competitive environment.
VIP customer example
Consider the following typical set of business requirements:
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Figure below depicts the price records data entries and corresponding price resolution, which customers will see depending on their pricing policy configuration in their profile.
Discounted stock exampleLabel Body 3.7.0
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Consider the following typical set of business requirements:
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Figure below depicts the price records data entries and corresponding price resolution, which customers will see when they add A001 either from main fulfilment centre or damaged packaging fulfilment centre.
Price list management
SKU price records are managed per shop per currency using the price lists management section. This section provides various searching capabilities by SKU code, product name and by tags. The match is partial by default to allow business user quick searches without having to type full SKU code or tags.
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It is anticipated that most of the price list management will be done via import/export facility automatically. In case of manual management manual import/export facility will also be useful when managing prices for large catalogs.
Validating prices configurations
With complex prices and promotions setup it is sometimes difficult to determine which price will be applied at what time frame. This is where prices tester tool can help in many ways. It allows to create a combination of products with corresponding quantity tears and specify additional parameters such as fulfilment centre and shipping method. The end result is like for like calculated cart for give setup that shows exactly which price will be applied and any promotions that might trigger in the process as well as taxes applied. Moreover the tool allow to set time frame for when the calculation should occur thus giving the opportunity to test what will happen as time elapses.
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