Defining Customer Pricing Options

Some pricing options can be set up as customer specific to offer the best customer service and provide the highest profitability for your company.

Doing business with customers from a different country may require you to trade in a currency other than your base currency. You can assign the customer's currency for these customers, so the system can calculate the exchange rates for each transaction.

A price class is a method of classifying customers for pricing purposes. Customers can be assigned several different price classes, depending on what products the customers buy and at which branch they buy them. When you create a new customer record, the system assigns the price class defined in one of the following control maintenance records:

• New Customer Maintenance Template

• New SOE Customer Template

• Default Customer Price Class - The system uses the entry in this record if no template is set up.

To change a customer price class for any branch to which the customer has access, you must be assigned the CUSTOMER.MAINT and CUST.PRICING.EDIT authorization keys and have access to those branches.

To define customer pricing options:

1. From the Maintenance menu, select Customer to display the Customer Maintenance window.

2. In the Customer field, enter a customer's name to display the customer record.

3. Select Pricing > Customer Pricing and Printing to display the Customer Pricing Information dialog box.

4. Click the Pricing tab.

5. For each field, enter the information you need for this customer's pricing needs.

   Field	Description
   Default Price Class	Enter the default price class to use for this customer. Price classes are defined in the Valid Customer Price Classescontrol maintenance record.
   Customer Type	Enter one or more customer promotional type to make promotions more available to customers who deal in specific business areas, for example, plumbing and HVAC. The types entered apply to all branches. Customer types are defined in the Valid Customer Types control maintenance record. For more information, see Assigning Multiple Promotional Types to Customers.
   Use Last Price/Cost Logic	Specify if a customer's last price and cost for a product determines the current price and cost for that product. See guidelines, below, if necessary. Your entry in this field overrides the setting in the Use Last Price/Cost Logiccontrol maintenance record:
   	Prompt- Displays the Last Price Verification dialog box for the customer in Sales Order Entry when a product is placed on an order. The last price displayed in this dialog box is the last price paid for the item over all branches. The customer is not affected by the setting in the Use Last Price/Cost Logiccontrol maintenance record.
   	Price Only- uses the last price as the current price of an item. To determine the current cost, it uses the normal costing calculation. Note: Setting this record to Price Only overrides promotional pricing, if last price pricing is found, and thus overrides standard best-price-check logic. Typically, only companies whose business type dictates it will activate last price pricing.
   	Cost Only- The system uses the last cost as the current cost of an item. To determine the current price, it uses the normal pricing calculation.
   	Both- The system uses the last price and last cost of an item as the current price or cost of an item.
   	None- Checks the Use Last Price/Cost Logiccontrol maintenance record to determine if last price pricing is enabled for the customer.
   	The following guidelines apply to last price pricing: Last price pricing disregards all other pricing or matrix cells with the exception of contract pricing and customer-specific matrix cells (ship-to or bill-to) and generates an order entry price based on the percentage markup from the last sale of the item to that customer. When a contract price or customer specific matrix cell is not in effect, the system prices an item at the COGS cost multiplied by the gross margin of the selling price from the customer's most recent shipment for the same item. The pricing audit displays the basis as "LP" and the formula as the percentage of difference between the last price and the calculated new price.The formula for margin is: Price - Cost / Price. For example, if the customer's price for the item on the most recent invoice was $1.25, the cost was $1.00 (a margin of 20%), and the current cost is $1.10, then the new price will be $1.375 and the audit displays LP+.10. You can activate last price pricing during system implementation, based on your business requirements. For this customer at each branch, you can define a threshold in the Minimum Variance Before Last Price Reductioncontrol maintenance record, and a cost reduction factor to use to reduce a price if the current cost is less than the previous cost and the difference exceeds the threshold.
   Restrict Price Changes in SOE	Enter one of the following to determine if a sales order writer can change prices for this customer: Yes- Prevents sales order writers from changing prices in Sales Order Entry for this customer. No- Allows the sales order writer to change prices in Sales Order Entry for this customer, based on user authorization.
   Decimal Places for Pricing	Enter the number of decimal places to display for prices on this customer's invoices. For example, to display prices with two decimal places, such as 10.53, enter 2. The number of decimals that you set here also determines how prices display for the customer on your web commerce site. Note: A setting in this field overrides the Number Of Digits Of Accuracy For Pricingcontrol maintenance record for the customer.
   Strategic Pricing Category	Select the category, such as contractor or OEM, to assign to the customer if you are using Strategic Pricing. Customers without a category assigned are not included in the Strategic Pricing analysis.
   Primary Currency	Select a currency if this customer's primary currency is not the same as your company's base currency. Leave this field blank to use your base currency for this customer's transactions. If a customer is based in a foreign country, the customer's primary currency does not have to be the currency of that country. Note: Foreign currencies are defined in the Valid Foreign Currenciescontrol maintenance record. After you define valid currencies, you can establish a base currency for your company using the Base Currency For Exchange Ratescontrol maintenance record, and then create a table of exchange rates for each foreign currency in Exchange Rate Maintenance.

6. Save your changes and exit the window.

More Options for Defining Customer Pricing Options

The following are some common options you might use while defining customer pricing options:

See Also:

Defining Customer Invoice Printing Options