Working with the Pricing tab

Price is often one of the most important factors customers consider when selecting a place to buy products. Companies that can establish the most positive price reputation in the product categories they offer will have a distinct advantage over their competitors. However, you do not necessarily need to match competitor prices in order to establish an equal price reputation, since customers rely on a relatively small number of products to determine an individual company's price reputation.

The more often you turn a given product, the lower gross profit margin you can afford to make. A one-size-fits-all pricing strategy results in many products being priced higher than the market will allow (driving sales down), and many others that are undervalued (decreasing profit share). Instead of giving customers a straight 25% discount on everything then, for example, you can offer them an ever larger discount on more popular items (thus building a positive price reputation) while protecting your margin on products that you turn less frequently.

The key to successfully pricing your products lies in the following:

Understanding customer differences

Leveraging those differences into pricing opportunities

Experimenting and evaluating

The Vision pricing tools have been designed to give you the flexibility you need to implement your pricing strategies. They enable you to set optimized prices while maintaining control of your profit margins.

Following are descriptions of the screens available on the Pricing tab.

Screen name

Purpose

Pricing Configuration

This screen is divided into two panes. Click the Maintenance Forms folder or the Contracts folder in the left pane to expand its contents. Then click a subfolder to expand its contents, and click one of the items in the subfolder to view details about it in the right pane.

The Maintenance Forms folder is where you access the following maintenances:

Price Level: Use this maintenance to establish different price levels for the products you offer to different groups of customers. Once you have set up price levels, you can indicate which price level should be used for each customer (or only certain customers, if appropriate). In addition, you can set up different price level calculations. Then when a customer orders a product, the price he or she will pay for that product may be determined by the discount type associated with the customer's price level.

To create a new price level, right-click this folder and select Add New Price Level.

Note: To access the Price Level maintenance, you must have the proper security privileges. The Pricing Maintenance job function needs to be assigned to one of your roles. Roles are assigned to users in the User Maintenance on the Security Maintenance screen of the Vision Configuration tab. For more information, refer to About roles and job functions.

Warranty Type: Use this maintenance to establish different warranty types. Each warranty schedule is assigned a warranty type. The warranty type indicates the how the warranty is measured: in clicks, in months, in miles, or in hours. Before you can set up warranty schedules and assigned them to products, you need to set up the warranty types.

To add a new warranty type, right-click this folder and select Add a New Warranty Type.

Note: To access the Warranty Type maintenance, you must have the proper security privileges. The Warranty Maintenance job function needs to be assigned to one of your roles. Roles are assigned to users in the User Maintenance on the Security Maintenance screen of the Vision Configuration tab. For more information, refer to About roles and job functions.

The Contracts folder is where you access the following maintenances:

Customer Contracts: Use this maintenance to set up and update the terms of customer contracts. You can also use this maintenance to copy contract pricing for products from one customer contract to another.

Contract Pricing: Use this maintenance to add products to and remove them from existing customer contracts.
Immediate Updates: Use this maintenance to manually kick off the update program that changes the pricing information set up in Contract Pricing. You can also use this maintenance to change the current effective date of the pricing for all products on a contract.

Note: To access any of these contract maintenances, you must have the proper security privileges. The Contract Maintenance job function needs to be assigned to one of your roles. Roles are assigned to users in the User Maintenance on the Security Maintenance screen of the Vision Configuration tab. For more information, refer to About roles and job functions.

Pricing Inquiry

This screen helps you quickly review the following:

Basic product information, such as the description, manufacturer, product class, product type, ABC code, and stock type.
The current pricing of a product for each price level.
The future pricing of a product for each price level.
The unit of measure and corresponding multiple and list price established for the product.
The availability, stock status, and ABC code of the product at each of your warehouses (or stores).
The vendors that offer this product, as well as the corresponding cost and unit of measure.

Note: To access this screen, you must have the proper security privileges. The Pricing Maintenance job function needs to be assigned to one of your roles. Roles are assigned to users in the User Maintenance on the Security Maintenance screen of the Vision Configuration tab. For more information, refer to About roles and job functions.

Pricing Model

This screen enables you to:

Set up and modify pricing models consisting of different pricing rules based on manufacturer, pricing class, product type, and ABC code.
Access the Price Level Calculation dialog box, which you can use to set up or modify calculations for each price level.

Note: To access the Pricing Model screen, you must have the proper security privileges. The Pricing Maintenance job function needs to be assigned to one of your roles. Roles are assigned to users in the User Maintenance on the Security Maintenance screen of the Vision Configuration tab. For more information, refer to About roles and job functions.

Warranty Schedule Maintenance

This screen enables you to set up and modify warranty schedules.

If customers return products to you that are still under warranty, a credit is applied to the customer's order for that warranty item. If a warranty schedule is specified for the product on the Product Management tab, the credit that the customer receives is prorated based on the terms of the warranty schedule.

Before you can set up warranty schedules and assigned them to products, you need to set up the warranty types. For more information, refer to Add a warranty type to your system.

Note: To access the Warranty Schedule Maintenance, you must have the proper security privileges. The Warranty Maintenance job function needs to be assigned to one of your roles. Roles are assigned to users in the User Maintenance on the Security Maintenance screen of the Vision Configuration tab. For more information, refer to About roles and job functions.