Grain Trader has comprehensive, flexible capacity for calculating and storing the selling prices of packaged goods. These prices are automatically retrieved and used when preparing an invoice from the optional Point of Sale (POS) module or a Goods Invoice.

The primary basis is the Pricing Tier, for example “Retail” (usually the default tier) and “Wholesale”. You can define any number of Tiers as required. Each customer is allocated to a Tier - by default the default Tier referred to previously. That is, if you accept the defaults, all customers are initially allocated to the Retail Tier.

Within each Tier you have three choices to store a selling price for each commodity:

• Manual pricing
• Apply a user-defined formula to the specific commodity
• Apply a user-defined Tier formula to all packaged commodities

• Commodities
• Manual Pricing
• Commodity-Specific Formulas
• Pricing Tier Formulas
• Setting Up Pricing Tiers
• Using the Formula Editor
• Setting the Customer's Pricing Tier
• Recalculating Prices

The Commodity window for a typical Packaged Good is shown below, opened at the Packaged Goods tab:

The checkbox “Exclude this commodity from automatic pricing…” is highlighted. If you want to use the automatic Tier pricing feature, leave this checkbox unchecked. This is the default setting for new commodities. If you want to use manual pricing or create a specific formula to calculate the price, check it. In the illustration above, manual prices have been entered, as signified by the solid mark in the checkboxes in the “Manual” column. However, because the “Exclude…” checkbox has not been checked, any manual prices entered will be overwritten by automatic calculations, should this be performed later. If you do check the “Exclude…” checkbox you will now see another two columns in the grid, as shown in the snippet below:

If a formula has been defined the checkbox in the “Formula” column will have a solid mark in it.

You can set a manual price simply by entering it directly into the grid and doing nothing else, as shown above in the previous section. However, if you do not check the “Exclude this commodity from automatic pricing…” checkbox, the manual price you enter will be overwritten by an automatically-calculated price if a formula is set and applied in the future. To avoid a manual price being overwritten in the future, simply check the “Exclude…” checkbox, set the manual price by entering it directly into the grid, and ensure that a commodity-specific formula has not been set for this commodity and Tier.

You can also manually set a price for a commodity and Tier using the Commodity Pricing window as described in Pricing Tier Formulas below.

Prices that were last modified manually are identified with a solid mark in the checkbox in the “Manual” column on the Pricing grid on the Commodity window, and are also shown in the grid on the Commodity Pricing window with a yellow background.

Setting a Commodity-specific Formula allows you to have exceptions to the “one size fits all” approach of a Tier formula. Commodity-specific formulas will cause manual prices to be overwritten when the formula calculation is executed. However, a Commodity-specific formula will take precedence over a Tier formula when automatic recalculations are being performed.

To create, edit or delete a Commodity-specific Formula, open the Commodity window for the commodity concerned and check the “Exclude this commodity from automatic pricing…” checkbox as described under Commodities above, then click the ellipsis (…) button in the Formula column for the Tier whose formula you want to manage.

For guidance on using the Formula Editor see the section Using the Formula Editor below.

Pricing Tier Formulas allow you to update the selling prices for all or most of your packaged good commodities in one easy step. If you do not exclude a commodity from automatic price calculations, and you do not define a Commodity-specific formula as described above, the selling price will be automatically recalculated using the Tier formula whenever a recalculation is ordered. Prices calculated using a Tier formula will overwrite manually-entered prices unless you specifically exclude the commodity from automatic recalculation, as described under Commodities above.

You can have as many Pricing Tiers as you need. By default, the Tiers Retail and Wholesale are predefined.

To manage Pricing Tiers and/or create, edit or delete Tier formulas, select the Utility | Packaged Commodity Pricing menu:

to display display the Commodity Pricing window:

On this window you can review the details of each commodity relevant to pricing. You can open the Commodity window for a commodity by clicking the ellipsis (…) button at the far left of each row in the grid. You can also enter a manual price for each Tier and commodity by typing the values directly into the grid cell in the appropriate row and column. As described above, manual prices can be overwritten by values calculated when a formula, either commodity-specific or Tier, is applied during the recalculation process.

To manage Tiers or create, edit or delete a Tier formula, click the Configure button to display the Commodity Pricing Tiers window:

You can change the left-to-right display order for the Tiers using the Move Up and Move Down buttons, or add a new Tier by clicking the Add button and entering the name for the new Tier directly into the grid.

To manage a formula, first select a sample commodity to use to illustrate changes in the Formula Editor if required, then click the ellipsis (…) button in the far right cell of the row for the selected Tier to display the Formula Editor window.

For guidance on using the Formula Editor see the section Using the Formula Editor below.

The Formula Editor can be displayed from either the Commodity window (for commodity-specific formulas) or the Commodity Pricing Tiers window (for Tier formulas).

The Formula Editor makes it easy to define multi-stage formulas to calculate the selling price by performing arithmetic calculations on a base price.

To begin, click the Add Step button and select the base price from the list in the Start with drop-down combo.

After you have defined each step you must click either the Apply button or the Undo button before adding another step or completing the formula. As you apply each step, the box captioned Calculated End Value shows the result of the calculations, applied to the sample commodity you selected in the Commodity Pricing Tiers window if the Editor was invoked from there, or the selected Commodity if invoked from the Commodity window. Note that this is only used for illustrative and checking purposes; this value is not saved or used elsewhere.

Continue to add as many steps as are needed to define the formula, and click OK to save it (or Cancel to abandon your changes). To delete a Step click the X icon at the left end of the grid row containing the step to be deleted. To delete a formula altogether click the Clear All button.

When you click OK on the Formula Editor window you are returned to the Commodity Pricing Tiers window. You can repeat the above procedure to manage additional formulas, or when finished click OK on this window to save your changes and return to the Commodity Pricing window.

Each customer can be assigned a Pricing Tier. By default, all customers are assigned the Retail Tier unless you change it.

To change a customer's Pricing Tier, simply open the Customer window and select the required Tier from the drop-down list as highlighted below, then save your changes.

If you have defined formulas for calculating the selling price, you can have the program recalculate prices at any time that suits your business. This could be as often as every time you receive a supplier's invoice, weekly, monthly, etc.

You can automatically recalculate prices from either the Commodity window or the Commodity Pricing window.

When invoked from the Commodity window, only the prices for all Tiers for that commodity are recalculated. It would make sense to use this method when you have received a shipment of this commodity and the purchase price has changed significantly, or you have defined a commodity-specific formula for this commodity. To execute the recalculation process from the Commodity window, click the Recalc Now button, shown highlighted below:

Invoking the recalculation process from the Commodity Pricing window processes all commodities and recalculates all the prices for all Tiers. This includes Commodity-specific Formulas and Tier Formulas.

To begin the process from the Commodity Pricing window, click the Auto Calc button, shown highlighted below: