Record Sales Prices and Discounts

Note

In 2020 release wave 2 we released streamlined processes for setting up and managing prices and discounts. If you're a new customer using that version, you're using the new experience. If you're an existing customer, whether you are using the new experience depends on whether your administrator has enabled the New sales pricing experience feature update in Feature Management. For more information, see Enabling Upcoming Features Ahead of Time.

Business Central supports various pricing strategies, ranging from one-price-fits-all models where an item is always sold at the same price, to special price agreements with specific customers, groups of customers, or special offers when you're running a sales campaign. For example, you might offer a special price on a sales order under the following conditions:

  • When it's for a minimum quantity
  • It's for a certain type of item
  • If it's created during a specific period of time

To use a basic pricing model, you only need to specify a unit price for an item or resource. That price will always be used on sales documents. For more advanced models, for example, when you are running a sales campaign and want to offer special prices, you can specify criteria for that on the Sales Prices page. You can offer special prices based on combinations of the following:

  • Customer
  • Item
  • Unit of measure
  • Minimum quantity
  • Date ranges that define when the prices are valid

Additionally, after you set up special prices, Business Central can automatically calculate the best price on sales and purchase documents and on job and item journal lines. For more information, see Best Price Calculation.

For sales discounts, you can set up and use the following types:

Discount Type Description
Sales Line Discount An amount that is used on sales lines if a certain combination of customer, item, minimum quantity, unit of measure, or starting and ending dates exists. These combinations work in the same way as for sales prices.
Invoice Discount A discount percentage that is subtracted from the sales document total if the sum of all lines on the document exceeds a certain minimum.
Tip

If an item should never be sold with a discount, leave the discount fields on the item page empty, and do not include the item in any line discount setups.

To set up a sales price for a customer

These steps differ, depending on whether your administrator has turned on the New sales pricing experience feature update. If the feature update is not turned on, follow the steps on the Current Experience tab.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Customers, and then choose the related link.
  2. Choose the customer, and then choose the Prices action.
  3. Fill in the fields on the line as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description. Fill a line for each combination that will grant a special sales price to the customer.

Using Sales and Purchase Price Lists

Note

Using price lists requires that your administrator has enabled the New sales pricing experience feature update in Feature Management. For more information, see Enabling Upcoming Features Ahead of Time.

The Applies-to Type and Applies-to No. fields let you choose what a price list will apply to, such as customer or customer price group. Use the View Columns for field to show columns that are relevant only for prices, discounts, or prices and discounts.

Converting Existing Prices When You Turn On the Pricing Feature Update

When you enable the New sales pricing experience feature update on the Feature Management page, the Feature Data Update guide opens. Use the Use default prices toggle as follows:

  • If you want to work with all prices on a single page, turn it on. Existing prices are converted to one default price list for each of the following:

    • Sales
    • Purchases
    • Job sales
    • Job purchases

    Afterward, you can edit all prices for these areas on the Prices Worksheet page. The default price lists are set on the Sales & Receivables Setup, Purchases & Payables Setup, and Jobs Setup pages.

    Note

    If prices are set only on item or resource cards, default price lists will not be filled in with those prices during data update. However, you can open any of default price lists or the Price Worksheet page and use the Suggest Lines action to add the prices set on item or resource cards.

  • To use sales price lists, turn it off. Existing prices will be converted to a new price list for each combination of customer, customer group, or campaign, and the starting and ending dates and currencies. If you have many combinations, you will have many price lists.

If you have already enabled the New Pricing Experience, you can create default price lists manually or specify an existing price list as the default. To set an existing price list as default, turn on the Allow Updating Defaults toggle on the price list. Then, on the Sales & Receivables Setup, Purchase & Payables or Jobs Setup pages, set the price list as the default.

Editing Active Price Lists

To allow people to edit prices on active price lists for items, resources, customers, vendors, or other entities that use pricing, turn on the Allow Editing Active Price toggle on the Sales & Receivables Setup and Purchase & Payables Setup pages.

When the Allow Editing Active Price toggle is turned off, to update prices in a price list you must change the status of the price list to Draft, make your change, and then reactivate the price list.

The Prices Overview page provides an overview of all prices across price lists. You can set filters to narrow down the list. After you change prices, you must use the Verify Lines action to verify the prices against other price list lines. For example, verifying the prices helps avoid duplicate or conflicting prices.

Note

When you edit a line in an active price list the status of the line becomes Draft, and the line will not be included in price calculations until you use the Verify lines action. After you verify the price, the line's status becomes Active and it will be used in price calculations.

To add new prices, on the Prices Overview page, use the Add New Lines action. The Prices Worksheet page opens, where you add price lines in the following ways:

  • By suggesting them based on criteria
  • Copying them from other price lists
  • Manually entering them.

Afterward, you can use the Implement Price Change action to compare the new prices with other price lists to avoid duplicates.

To copy sales prices

These steps differ, depending on whether your administrator has turned on the New sales pricing experience feature update. If the feature update is not turned on, follow the steps on the Current Experience tab.

If you want to copy sales prices, such as an individual customer's sales prices to use for a customer price group, you must run the Suggest Sales Price on Wksh. batch job on the Sales Price Worksheet page.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Sales Price Worksheet, and then choose the related link.

  2. Choose the Suggest Sales Price on Wksh. action.

  3. On the Sales Prices FastTab, fill in the Sales Type and Sales Code fields with the original sales prices you want to copy.

  4. In the top section of the request page, fill in the Sales Type and Sales Code fields with the type and name you want the sales prices copied to.

  5. If you want the batch job to create new prices, select the Create New Prices check box.

  6. Choose the OK button to fill in the lines on the Sales Price Worksheet page with the suggested new prices, indicating that they are valid for the selected sales type.

    Note

    This batch job only creates suggestions and it does not implement the suggested changes. If you are satisfied with the suggestions and want to implement them, that is insert them on the Sales Prices page, choose the Implement Price Changes action on the Sales Price Worksheet page.

To bulk update item prices

These steps differ, depending on whether your administrator has turned on the New sales pricing experience feature update. If the feature update is not turned on, follow the steps on the Current Experience tab.

If you want to bulk update item prices, such as increase all item prices by some percentage, you can fill in the Sales Price Worksheet by using the following batch jobs:

  • Suggest Item Price on Wksh. suggests changes by applying an adjustment factor to existing sales prices, or by copying existing sales price agreements to other customer, customer price groups, or sales campaigns.
  • Suggest Item Price on Wksh. suggests changes by applying an adjustment factor to existing unit prices on item cards, or by suggesting prices for new combinations of currency, units of measure, and so on. The unit prices on items are not changed.
  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Sales Price Worksheet, and then choose the related link.
  2. Choose the Suggest Item Price on Wksh. action.
  3. On the Item FastTab, fill in the No. or Inventory Posting Group or other fields with the original item prices you want to update.
  4. In the top section of the request page, fill in the Sales Type and Sales Code with the type and name you want the sales prices copied to.
  5. If you want the batch job to automatically adjust suggested item prices, enter the adjustment in Adjustment Factor field. For example, you would enter 1.15 in the Adjustment Factor for a 15% increase in the item price.
  6. If you want the batch job to create new prices, turn on the Create New Prices toggle.
  7. Choose OK to fill in the lines on the Sales Price Worksheet page with the suggested new prices.
  8. To implement the suggestions, use the Implement Price Changes action. The batch job creates suggestions but does not implement them.

Sales Invoice Discounts and Service Charges

When you use invoice discounts, the total amount on the invoice determines the size of the discount that is granted. On the Cust. Invoice Discounts page, you can also add a service charge to invoices over a certain amount.

If you want invoice discounts to be calculated automatically, on the Sales & Receivables Setup page, turn on the Calc Inv. Discount toggle.

For each customer, you can specify whether you will offer invoice discounts if the criteria are met. For example, if the invoice amount is large enough. You can define the terms of the invoice discount in local currency for domestic customers and in foreign currency for foreign customers.

You link discount percentages to specific invoice amounts in the Cust. Invoice Discounts page for each customer. You can enter any number of percentages. Each customer can have their own page, or you can link several customers to the same page.

In addition to, or instead of, a discount percentage, you can link a service charge amount to a specific invoice amount.

For training in discounts in sales, see Set up discounts for your customers at Microsoft Learn.

Calculating Invoice Discounts on Sales

When all the items have been entered as lines, you can calculate the invoice discount for the entire sales document by choosing the Calculate Invoice Discount action.

The discount is calculated based on all the lines in the sales document for items where the Allow Invoice Disc. field on the sales order line contains Yes. This is the default setting for items. Lines with item charges, for example, are not included in the calculation of the invoice discount. If you want to apply a discount to such lines, you must set the Line Discount % field on the relevant lines.

Tip

If the Calc. Inv. Discount field is selected in the Sales and Receivables Setup page, then the invoice discount is calculated automatically when you do either of the following on a sales document:

  • View statistics
  • View a test report
  • Print
  • Post

The invoice discount terms for a customer are defined in the Cust. Invoice Discounts page for the customer. The currency code on the sales document is used to find the invoice discount terms in the corresponding currency.

If invoice discounts have not been defined for foreign currencies, then the invoice discount terms defined in the Cust. Invoice Discounts page with amounts in your local currency and the exchange rate on the posting date on the sales document are used to calculate the invoice discount in the foreign currency.

To set up a sales line discount for a customer

These steps differ, depending on whether your administrator has turned on the New sales pricing experience feature update. If the feature update is not turned on, follow the steps on the Current Experience tab.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature icon, enter Customers, and then choose the related link.
  2. Open the relevant customer card, and then choose the Line Discounts action.
  3. Fill in the fields on the line as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description. Fill a line for each combination that will grant a sales line discount to the customer.
Note

When you open the Sales Prices and Sales Line Discounts pages from a specific customer, the Sales Type Filter and Sales Code Filter fields are set for the customer and cannot be changed or removed.

To set up prices or line discounts for all customers, a customer price group, or a campaign, you must open the pages from an item card. Alternatively, for sales prices, use the Sales Price Worksheet page. For more information, see To bulk update item prices.

To set up an invoice discount for a customer

When you have decided which customers are eligible for invoice discounts, enter the invoice discount code on the customer cards and set up the terms for each code.

  1. Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature icon, enter Customers, and then choose the related link.
  2. Open the customer page for a customer that will be eligible for invoice discounts.
  3. In the Invoice Disc. Code field, select a code for the relevant invoice discount terms to use to calculate invoice discounts for the customer.
Note

Invoice discount codes are represented by existing customer cards. Using customer names as codes lets you to quickly assign invoice discount terms to customers by picking the name of another customer who will have the same terms.

Now set up the sales invoice discount terms.

  1. On the Customers page, choose the Invoice Discounts action. The Cust. Invoice Discounts page opens.
  2. In the Currency Code field, enter the code for a currency that the invoice discount terms on the line applies to. Leave the field blank to set up invoice discount terms in USD.
  3. In the Minimum Amount field, enter the minimum amount that an invoice must have to be eligible for the discount.
  4. In the Discount % field, enter the invoice discount as a percentage of the invoice amount.
  5. Repeat steps 5 through 7 for each currency that the customer will receive a different invoice discount for.

Best Price Calculation

When you have recorded special prices and line discounts for sales and purchases, Business Central ensures that your profit on item trade is always optimal by automatically calculating the best price on sales and purchase documents and on job and item journal lines.

The best price is the lowest permissible price with the highest permissible line discount on a given date. Business Central automatically calculates this when it inserts the unit price and the line discount percentage for items on new document and journal lines.

Note

The following describes how the best price is calculated for sales. The calculation is the same for purchases.

  1. Business Central checks the combination of the bill-to customer and the item and then calculates the applicable unit price and line discount percentage, using the following criteria:

    • Does the customer have a price/discount agreement, or does the customer belong to a group that does?
    • Is the item or the item discount group on the line included in any of these price/discount agreements?
    • Is the order date (or the posting date for the invoice and credit memo) within the starting and ending date of the price/discount agreement?
    • Is a unit of measure code specified? If so, Business Central checks for prices/discounts with the same unit of measure code, and prices/discounts with no unit of measure code.

  2. Business Central checks whether any price/discount agreements apply to information on the document or journal line, and then inserts the applicable unit price and line discount percentage using the following criteria:

    • Is there a minimum quantity requirement in the price/discount agreement that is fulfilled?
    • Is there a currency requirement in the price/discount agreement that is fulfilled? If so, the lowest price and the highest line discount for that currency are inserted, even if local currency would provide a better price. If there is no price/discount agreement for the specified currency code, Business Central inserts the lowest price and the highest line discount in your local currency.

If no special price can be calculated for the item on the line, then either the last direct cost or the unit price from the item card is inserted.

See Also

Setting Up Sales
Sales
Working with Business Central