Overview of price lists

A price list is a list that defines pricing for specific items or SKUs. It consists of header information and a list of products and their list prices.

The header information contains the name, description, currency, effectivity dates, and status of the price list. Each price list must have a currency assigned to it, and the price list can have a status of either Active or Inactive. The price list lines associate products with a list price and show either positive or negative adjustments. Each price list line has zero or more effectivity tiers (within the header effectivity period), and each tier can have its own list price.

A price list can be assigned:
  • To customers (that is, consumers or registered users of an Enterprise, B2B customers, and anonymous users)
  • To one or more customer attributes. For example, you can assign a price list to a region, for example, Boston, to a seller, or to a customer level, such as a Gold customer.
  • Based on customers or customer attributes
  • To a seller or region

Each price list is applicable to a particular customer or a group of customers for a particular duration. A pricing organization can define different price lists for customers based on various criteria. For example, a pricing organization can create a price list that is applicable to regular business customers and another price list that is applicable to only a few special business customers so that the prices for the special customers are less than that for the regular customers.

One price list can inherit the items and price information from another price list. When a price list has one or more dependent price lists inheriting the price information from it, that price list is called a master price list. For example, if an organization has three divisions to cater to customers in three different regions, the organization can create one master price list where the prices of all the items are defined, and three dependent price lists which inherit the items and price information from the master price list. A pricing organization user can either increase or decrease the prices that the dependent price list inherits from a master price list by a percentage adjustment or absolute adjustment.

A pricing organization can create multiple price lists to offer different prices to different customers. When a customer buys some items, the price of these items is calculated based on the price lists assigned to that customer.

The price list management process involves the following steps:

  1. Creating a price list.
  2. Adding items to the price list.
  3. Adjusting the prices in the price list.
  4. Assigning the price list to customers.

While a pricing organization user can only create or modify a price list, add items to a price list, or adjust the prices in a price list, an enterprise user can only assign a price list to customers.

Pricing service

You can use the Pricing Service to deliver prices to targeted customers. To do this, you must create price lists that are specific to customers or customer attributes, and then associate the price lists with the targeted customers. The Pricing Service calculates the lowest price for a product based on the active price lists associated with a customer or customer attributes. You can use multiple price lists to offer different prices to different customers.

Creating a price list

When you create a price list, you select the products to be assigned to the list, and then set the list prices for those products within the context of the price list. You must also set a currency, a status (Active or Inactive), and a start date and an end date (effectivity dates) for each price list. The start date and the end date define the range during which a price list is applicable. If the current date is not within this range, the price list will not be used for any price calculations that are performed for the current date. You can specify that a price list adjust to time zones. You can temporarily change a price list’s status to Inactive while updating pricing information. After the changes are complete, you can change the status to Active. If a price list’s status is Active and the current date is within the price list’s effectivity dates, any change made by a pricing administrator takes effect immediately.

How price lists are administered

Price lists can be administered through the IBM® Sterling™ Business Center application.