Overview

Price Profiles and Tiers allow you to manage different pricing schemes, or sets of rules, for your customers. This is what is applied to any catalog assigned to that account, even accounts with multiple catalogs.

Location: Control Panel > Admin > Pricing

ChannelOnline comes with a default Price Profile, called 25% Markup, and it will be used for all customer and prospect creation. This profile cannot be deleted but can be edited, or additional profiles can be created and assigned. Each customer or storesite can be assigned to one price profile or price tier (optional) at a time.

The difference between Profiles and Tiers.

• Price Profiles: These are the foundations of pricing assigned to customers and prospects. It controls the global defaults for item types (product, service and labor), the suppliers used for cost, and detailed rules. All customer have a price profile.  
• Tiers: Group multiple customers together for Mfr/category rules and then deviate with the more specific pricing and global defaults with Price Profile rules.

User Access

Administration

Users can add and edit Pricing with the following Access Rights settings:

• Create Price Profiles
• Edit All Price Profiles
• Create Price Tiers
• Edit All Price Tiers
• Set Default Price Profile for StoreSite / Scratch Pad (this is the default settings)

Application with Accounts

Price Profiles permissions give users the ability to Allow or Deny other users access to use price profiles owned by them. This is helpful if you want to have the multiple users have access to the same pricing structure for multiple accounts by sharing a single Price Profile. There are two groups that have separate permissions:

• Access Rights – Users must have Assign Price Profile to Customers and Assign Price Tier to Customers.
• My Groups – Sets the permissions for all users within the same My Group that your profile resides in.
• Other Groups – Sets the permissions for all users that are outside your group.Price Profiles permissions give you the ability to Allow or Deny other users access to use price profiles owned by you. This is helpful if you want to have the multiple users have access to the same pricing structure for multiple accounts by sharing a single Price Profile. There are two groups that have separate permissions:
  • My Groups – Sets the permissions for all users within the same My Group that your profile resides in.
  • Other Groups – Sets the permissions for all users that are outside your group.

Create & Edit

To create a new profile:

1. Use the “Create New Profile” button or “Copy Profile” link in the actions widget to create a new price profile. In the create window you can select either Price Profile or Tier (if enabled). After it’s generated, click on the pencil icons on the view page to edit the following information:
2. On Profile Details:
   • Profile Name – The name of this price profile. Be as descriptive as possible.
   • Rounding – Round your customer prices up or down to the nearest whole dollar.
   • Never Exceed List – This will prevent the price profile from pricing any products above the list price when list price is available.
   • Never Below Cost – This will prevent any discount rules from dropping the price to below your supplier cost.
   • Allow Zero Price – Allows your sales team to give items away in your quotes by zeroing out the price.
   • Default Rates & Methods – the catch all pricing setting for products, services and labor items.
3. On Profile Settings:
   • Active Suppliers – This determines which supplier’s products will be available in this profile and includes supported, custom and contract.
   • Base Cost Selection – This determines which supplier cost to base the customers price rules from.
   • Gov / Edu Selection – Determines what kind of customers this price profile will be used for.
   • Contract Pricing – Determines if contract pricing can be show in this profile

Pricing rules are available for part numbers, categories, attributes/tags, and manufacturers, plus unique rules from selected attributes (Items Admin > Rules) or tags (Company Settings > Manage Tags). If no pricing rules are met by these four rule types, then the global rate and method is used.
In order to add a new pricing rule:

• Click the “Add New Rules” button above the rule section you want to add to
• For “Category / Manufacturer Pricing Rules”, enter the part number, category, or manufacturer name
• Provide a rate and method. For example, a rate of “10” and method of “discount” will add a “10% discount off list” rule for that product or group of products.
• Follow a similar process to add “Attribute / Tag Rules” and “Part Number Pricing Rules” (to learn more about rules, go to Item Rules.
• Applying to a Cost Range, see Price Range example chart.
• Category and Product IDs are used for importing quantity discounts (see below).

Adjustment Methods

The following methods can be used when creating price profile rules.

** Caution: Use the ‘Never allow customer price to exceed list price’ option with care. If set, it is possible for the price profile generated customer price to be less than your supplier cost. Selling below your supplier cost is also possible when using the ‘sell at’ part number pricing method and the ‘discount from list’ pricing method. To avoid selling below your cost, select the ‘Never allow customer price to go below cost’ option at the price profile level.

Periodically click save while working, once all rules are created, click the Save and Exit button.

Note: There is a training video for price profiles available.

Suppliers

Suppliers are used for cost.  Price Profiles must be updated to utilize any supplier you have created where you want there cost and stock to be used in the pricing calculations. There are three supplier types that can be assigned: supported, custom, and contract. TIP: If an item seems to be missing from a customer catalog, check the suppliers in your price profile settings.

Note: Custom suppliers enabled as “Customer Inventory Suppliers” will NOT be available for use in pricing profiles. These are added at the account level. 

Rule Application

Below is the order to which price rules get applied with the use of both profiles and tiers (or groups).

Price Profile

Pricing rules for this profile will be applied as listed from the bottom up.

The order of application (precedence) is: Part Number rules, Attribute / Tag rules, combined Category / Manufacturer rules, then either Category rules or Manufacturer rules (depending on your selection), and last is the Global Pricing Scheme that addresses items not directly affected by a specific rule.

Also a Price Range set in Category / Manufacturer rule always takes precedence over a rule with no Price Range set.

CAUTION: Use the “Never allow customer price to exceed list price” option with care. If set, it is possible for the price profile generated customer price to be less than your supplier cost. Selling below your supplier cost is also possible when using the “sell at” part number pricing method and the “discount from list” pricing method. To avoid selling below your cost, select the “Never allow customer price to go below cost” option at the price profile level.

NOTE: The “Discount from List” pricing method relies on accurate list pricing which is not always consistent and guaranteed within supplier provided catalogs. In the event that a list price is not available for an item, the “Exceed List Rule” cannot be applied. So any item without list price will not have “Exceed List” price protection.

Price Tiers

Price Tiers makes managing large customer bases easier by assigning larger groups of accounts to tiers and creating smaller custom price variations at the Price Profile level if and when needed. Tiers do not take the place of Price Profiles, all accounts will still need to be assigned to a Price Profile for Tiers to work. When the a tier is assigned to an account the rule structure looks like (from granular to most broadest):

• Global Line Item Pricing (most specific, always applies)
• Price Profile – Part # specific rule
• Price Profile – Attribute Tags
• Price Profile – Category / Manufacturer
• Price Tier – Part # specific rule
• Price Tier – Category / Manufacturer
• Price Profile – Global settings (broadest rules, catches items without other rules)

To enable pricing tiers go to Admin > Pricing > Settings and select the “Enable the use of Pricing Tiers.” checkbox.

System Default

All new StoreSites will be assigned this price profile. This is also the price profile used on all scratch pads for all the sales users. This is set by going to Admin > Pricing > Settings and selecting a Price Profile from those available in the dropdown. Do not forget to hit the Save button in the footer to save your selection.

High Variability Warning

The “High Variability” functionality is a feature in ChannelOnline that protects you in the event of an error in your supplier’s price files. If the system detects a variance in cost greater than 20% between your suppliers, it will popup a warning message for internal sales reps, and will prompt your store customer to contact a sales rep. Then the sales rep can review the product in question and determine which supplier costs are valid and quote the customer accordingly.

If you feel that this “High Variability” feature is disrupting your business operations, you have the option to disable it under Admin | Price Profiles. If you choose to disable this feature, you must understand that you will no longer be warned about any pricing discrepancies due to errors in your supplier files. There is the possibility that your end-customers could mistakenly be quoted products that are far below your cost.

ChannelOnline only relays the information provided by your supplier price files, and the “High Variability” feature is your only protection from possible errors in those files. If you understand the purpose of the “High Variability” feature and the possible consequences of disabling it, you have the option to select the box on the Admin | Price Profiles page to disable the feature internally and/or on your store.

To disable the feature, go to Admin > Pricing > Settings and selecting both the “I have read the linked document …” and the “Disable Internally” checkboxes.

Global Pricing

If you use Global Line Item Pricing those items have a pre-established (fixed) global pricing that supersedes all pricing profile settings.

You can set a fixed Global Price, or rule, for an item that is available for all Sales Reps and Customers to use. For instance, you could specify that a HP Laserjet always sells at a Global Price of $2499 regardless of customer or price profile. This fixed Global Price supersedes all price profile settings and cannot be used within any price profile.

To enable pricing tiers go to Admin > Pricing > Settings and select the “Use Global Line Item Pricing as default price …” checkbox.

To add a global price rule to your list, go to the product page of the item that needs the fixed rule, then select he Edit Global Price link in the Items Action box. To view a list of global line item pricing, go to Admin > Pricing > Settings and click on the View icon and link.

Assigning to Accounts

Only one price profile and tier can be assigned to an account. They are assigned by going to a customer or prospect, clicking on the edit pencil in the Settings widget and editing the General Info section.  Use the dropdowns for Pricing Profile and Pricing Tier to select the correct one for that account.

Import / Export

The Price Profile Import Wizard allows you to import Category / Manufacturer Pricing Rules and Part Number Pricing Rules into ChannelOnline’s Price Profiles & Tiers using the same 3 easy steps (Upload / Import File, Field Mapping / Import, and Import Status). Visit Price Profile Import/Export to learn more about this process.

Quantity Discounts. Within a price profile you can import quantity price breaks from an excel file has been added in this release. From a Price Profile view page, select the ‘Import Quantity Discounts’ button at the top of the rule sections next to the price profile import. The popup window include a download of the sample file format to be used to import quantity breaks. Users can create rows that correspond to the category ID and/or product ID rule (now shown in the price profile) where they want to apply quantity breaks. In each row with the rule ID provide: the min/max range, rate and method to be applied. Instructions are located on tab two of the sample file.

Global Line Item Pricing. From the global line item list page there are import and export buttons in the footer. Export will launch the price profile export wizard with this pre-selected. Follow the steps in the wizard to download your zip file. The Import button will also launch the wizard. Again follow the steps in the wizard to import. A sample file can be found on Step 1 of the import process.