One Price for Everybody
An item used to have one selling price and nothing else. It now has price lists — one per customer, a default for everyone else, quantity breaks, dates and a currency — and the tiers that lived in your sales team's memory have somewhere to go.
The position, immediately
The price is decided in one place now: the customer's own price list, then your default list, then the item's own price, on quotes, orders, invoices and at the till. If your commercial model is tiered — distributor, reseller, direct, volume band — each tier is a list and each customer points at one. What is still a person's job is noticing when somebody overrides the list, because nothing yet reports a sale below it.
Pricing structure is the thing buyers of business software most reliably assume is present, because every business has one and no business thinks of it as a feature.
For a long time, opening the item record here showed one selling price, and the customer record had no field that said what kind of customer this was. That has changed, and the change is worth describing exactly, because a price list is several capabilities that buyers tend to ask for as one.
What exists, exactly
On an item: a buying price, a markup percentage, a selling price, and whether the price includes tax. That is the fallback when no list has a row for the item.
On a price list: a name, a currency, a validity period and whether its prices include tax. Each row names an item, a minimum quantity, and either a fixed price or a percentage on the item's own price — so a distributor list can say ten per cent off everything it lists, and a volume band is a second row for the same item from fifty units up. On a customer: which list they are on. Several customers on one list is how a tier works.
On a document: the list price fills itself in — the customer's list first, then the default list, then the item price — and a line price can still be changed by whoever is raising it. A discount at the till is still recorded as an amount against the sale with a description, after the fact, as a record of what happened rather than a rule that produced it.
The system now knows the price you should have given. What it does not yet do is tell you when somebody gave a different one.
Five things a price list does, and which are here
| What a price list does | What happens here |
|---|---|
| Applies the right price automatically | Yes — on quotes, sales orders, invoices, recurring invoices and the till, from the customer's list, then the default |
| Makes the wrong price visible | Not yet — a line can be overridden, and nothing compares the price given with the list price |
| Survives the person who negotiated it | Yes — an agreed rate is a row on a list with dates on it, not a memory |
| Lets you change a whole tier at once | Yes — edit the list, and every new document for every customer on it picks the change up |
| Reports margin by segment | Not yet — margin is per item and per sale, with no segment or salesperson to group by |
The third row is the one nobody plans for and it is now the strongest. Commercial terms agreed verbally survive exactly as long as the relationship between the two people who agreed them. A price list with a validity period is, among other things, an institutional memory — and an annual agreement that ends on a date stops pricing on that date rather than lingering.
Why a German commercial model runs into this early
Because tiered distribution is the normal shape here rather than an advanced one. A manufacturer or importer sells to distributors, to resellers, and sometimes direct, and each of those is a different price for the same article — not as a concession but as the structure of the market.
Volume banding sits on top of that, and annual agreements sit on top of the banding. All three now have somewhere to live: a list per tier, quantity rows inside it, and a list of its own with dates for a customer on an annual agreement. A list prices only documents in its own currency, so a euro list and a Swiss franc list for the same reseller are two lists rather than one with a conversion.
There is a second-order effect worth naming. Because there is now an expected price, there could be such a thing as an unexpected one — a line sold below the tier rate. Nothing reports that yet. The pricing checks that exist are still absolute — an item selling below cost, on an unusually thin margin, or at zero — and none of them compares the price given with the list it should have come from.
Four questions about pricing, for any vendor
Show me two customers getting different prices for the same item, automatically.
A good answer sounds like
A price list or a customer group, applied on the document.
What it actually means
Ours does this from the customer's list. The demonstration to ask for is the automatic application, not the ability to type a different number.
What happens when I change a tier price?
A good answer sounds like
Every future document on that tier picks it up.
What it actually means
This is what makes a price list worth having. Ours does: edit the list and new documents for its customers follow.
Can you show me sales below the agreed price?
A good answer sounds like
A report.
What it actually means
Requires an expected price to exist and a comparison against it. Ours has the first and not yet the second — ask which half a vendor is showing you.
Where do volume breaks live?
A good answer sounds like
A banded price list.
What it actually means
Ours are rows inside a list, from a minimum quantity up. Volume pricing is still the most commonly assumed and most commonly absent feature in this bracket.
The list exists; three things build on it
The foundation — a price list, a customer pointing at one, and volume bands inside it — is built. What follows from it is smaller than the foundation was, and the first item is the one that changes behaviour.
A below-list exception report
Now that an expected price exists, a line sold below it becomes something a report can list — by customer, by item and by who raised the document. That is the actual point of the whole structure.
Discount authority per role
How far below the list a role may go before the document needs somebody else's approval, so an override is a decision with a name on it rather than a typed number.
Margin by tier and by salesperson
Margin grouped by the list a sale was priced from and by the person who raised it, so the tiers can be judged on what they actually earn.
We put scope on a public page and dates in a written quote. Tell us how many tiers you run and how often the prices move, and we will come back with a written scope, timeline and cost.
Scope pricing controlsWhat AWRA OpsHub does today
- One selling price per item, with a buying price, a markup percentage and a tax-inclusive flag, used when no list prices the item.
- Price lists with a currency, a validity period, a tax-inclusive setting and an active status, each row a fixed price or a percentage on the item's price.
- A list per customer, then a default list, then the item's price — decided in one place for quotes, sales orders, proformas, invoices, recurring invoices and the till.
- Quantity breaks: the row with the highest minimum quantity not above the quantity ordered wins.
- Per-line price editing on quotes, invoices and till sales, so a negotiated price can always be given.
- Discounts recorded against a till sale with a description and an amount, attributable to the sale.
- A currency and a credit limit per customer, with exposure computed across the balance and every open invoice.
- Anomaly detection on pricing — items selling below cost, on unusually thin margins, or at zero.
More we can add to your workspace
- A customer group as its own record, carrying terms beyond price. A tier today is a list several customers point at.
- A report of sales below the list price, now that a list price exists to compare against.
- Discount authority per role, with approval when an override goes past it.
- A discount rule at the till — a promotion or a basket rule — rather than an amount recorded after the fact.
- Margin reported by price list, by segment or by salesperson.
Where we point you to a specialist
- For a single-list business — one price, occasional negotiation — the item price is still the whole story and none of the above applies.
- The pricing anomaly detection that exists is absolute rather than relative. It knows what an item cost you; it does not yet compare what this customer paid with their list.
- This is market-neutral. It is what a single price does to a tiered market, and tiered distribution is simply the default shape here.
Write the tiers down, then load them
A maintained document naming every tier and every agreed rate is worth an afternoon, and it is now also the import: each tier becomes a list, each agreed rate a row, each customer a pointer. We will go through it with you against your own price sheet.
Talk about pricingFrequently asked questions
Can we set different prices per customer?
Yes. Put the customer on a price list and their documents are priced from it — quotes, sales orders, invoices and the till alike. A customer with no list of their own gets the default list, and an item no list covers falls back to its own selling price. Several customers on one list is a tier.
How do people manage tiered pricing today?
As lists: one per tier, quantity breaks as rows inside each, and a dated list of its own for a customer on an annual agreement. The habit that still matters is reviewing a sample of invoices monthly for overridden prices, because a line can be changed by hand and nothing yet reports a sale below its list.
Does the point of sale respect anything customer-specific?
Yes, on price, once a customer is chosen on the sale: the till asks the same place every other document does, so the customer's list applies. A till discount is still entered as an amount and recorded against the sale. Credit control works at the counter too — a customer over their limit is genuinely held.
