Negotiating prices in sales orders
Merchanter has tools to help negotiate prices both on order lines and for a whole order
Written by Ian Oldrey
Updated at February 17th, 2023
Table of Contents
When Negotiating Order Prices, Merchanter features options for and information based on products and Customer purchase history.
This video gives an overview of Negotiating Order Prices.
On your Merchanter system you can:
Use various methods to decide and make changes with Negotiating Order Prices.
Setting prices on order lines
Merchanter will apply any automatic pricing (product price tables or customer price agreements) as the line is added to the order. You can then review and update the price manually
When at the Order Line view within an Order:
Setting the price
By clicking in the price field this can be set to a new price per item/unit of measure
Click on the unit of measure to the right of the price to select an alternative unit of measure for pricing. Available units will be set by the stock method of the product.
Price History
Last price paid quick view
Hover over the order line Price and it will display a order history tooltip
Last price full history
- Price Detail (click the Clock icon - next to price)
- Overall price can be input near Product Name
- Previous Quotes/Sales information
- Active price table
- Line Price History
- Green coloured row – customer qualifies for discount
Line Discounts
- Discount icon - (click the Present & bow icon - next to value)
- Add Discount Lines
- Combine discounts when multiple discounts are entered
- Set Nett price – from the + symbol
- Line price history - lists all discounts applied to the order (identify or track the history of negotiations)
- Negotiate the; Price per Unit/line Value price/Discount or Margin percentages
Setting whole line value
Setting the total value for the line will apply a discount to the line to achieve the desired value, whilst leaving the price at the original setting
Setting the desired line margin
Entering a percentage value will amend the price of the line to achieve the desired Gross Margin. The exact margin may be slightly different to the entered value as the new price of the item will be rounded to the nearest penny/cent
Negotiating Whole Order value
At the top of the Order view –
Click either;
- Total (inc vat) price
- Goods (ex vat) price
From the whole order negotiation screen you can work on the whole order value.
Any discounts will be applied as either:
- Spread across lines - applies the same discount percentage to each of the order lines to apply the total discount required for the order
- Max Value Line - applies a percentage discount to the order line with the highest value to acheive the total discount required for the order
- Whole order discount - applies a financial value discount to the order header to get to the total order value desired
Should I use spread discount or whole order discount?
Whole order discounts can be either applied to the lines or left as a whole order discount value. There are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches:
| Discount type | Benefits | Drawbacks | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spread discount over lines | Reports an accurate margin for each order line |
When looking up last price paid for a customer it will be a lower figure, so more likely to give value away. Can be out by a few pennies as each line can only be discounted to a rounded pence/cents per unit or unit of measure |
Useful if giving a large discount to the customer |
| Whole order discount value |
Calculates to the exact penny Keeps a higher value as price paid when customer purchases again in the future |
Shows an accurate margin for the overall order but overstates the line margins achieved | Useful for rounding orders to a good number (i.e. £1,002.28 to £1,000) |