Introduction

Most commonly sale items in Provet Cloud should have a defined selling price, however occasionally a standard pricing variance is needed, based upon the item's usage. 

For example, consider a scenario where a food item is sold as a box of 10 bags, but it is also possible to sell the bags individually. In that case, a clinic may want to design pricing in such a way that buying an individual bag carries a higher selling price to the client, and effectively giving a discount towards buying a whole box.

This kind of flexible pricing structure can be achieved with Provet Cloud's alternative pricing function.

The following instructions uses this 10-unit package design as an example.

Setting Up an Item with an Alternative Price

1. Open an existing item profile or create a new item

Navigate to your item list by following Settings > Items & Lists > Items. Find an item that you want to set up with alternative pricing or create a new one. On the item profile dialogue, choose the 'Stock and pricing' tab and scroll down to the 'Pricing' section.

2. Make sure the stock options and the initial pricing of the item is set up correctly

Are the item's stock options set up as desired? That includes package description, default usage size, units in the package, and unit description above, on the same dialogue.

In our case, we set the package description to 'box', default usage size to 'Units', units in the package to '10' and the unit description to 'pack' - so it's a box of food that contains 10 smaller packs.

Is the pricing for a package of the unit set up correctly? Check the VAT group, the purchase price (wholesale price), markup percentage, and selling price.

In our case, we have an item with 20% VAT, 20 € purchase price, and 30% initial markup.

3. Add an alternative price

At the bottom of the pricing section, there's a blue 'Alternative prices' button - use this to add an alternative price to the item. An additional section will open up, allowing you to define the alternative price:

1. Start by giving it a name. Users need this to recognise the intent of this price. In our case, we name it 'Pack-price' as we want the pricing to be used when individual packs are sold.
2. Define the intended usage size. This allows you to specify a strict use case for this pricing. When the users select this price, they can't change the sale unit, only the quantity. In our case, we select 'Units', because we want to define a higher markup when the item is sold as packs.
3. Define the quantity. In our case, we select '1' because we want to set the pricing for a single pack. The users can still change the quantity when selling the item, and the total price will be quantity multiplied by the price shown here on the alternative price section. This field allows us to add more pricing cases (more alternative prices) - for example, the price of 3 packs may have yet another design.
4. Select the price nominator. In our case, we select 'Purchase price' because we want the item to have a little higher markup when selling it as packs (units) as opposed to boxes (packages). You also have the options to select 'Net purchase price', which is the combination of the purchase price, wholesaler discount, producer discount and special discount fields above, or 'Selling price', which is the combination of all pricing fields above. This gives flexibility and allows you to find the needed final price based on several factors.
5. Define the markup percentage. Use this field to specify a special markup percentage that is applied after all previous calculations (depending on the price nominator). In our case, we select 60% as we want the item to be sold with 60% when sold as packs, and with 30% markup when sold as boxes.
6. Use the 'Use extra fees' checkbox to select whether any injection, dispense or handling fees should be added or not.
7. Add any additional alternative pricing options you want and use the blue 'Save' button below to complete the setup.

Our Example Case in Summary

• We have an item with a wholesale price of 20 €. That is marked up by 30% by default, giving us a selling price of 26 €. If 20% VAT is added, the final price for the customer will be 31.20 €, and the unit prices will be 2.60 € and 3.12 € respectively since we have 10 units in a package. Note that the item can still be sold as units with this price too if the user chooses to do that.
• We have an alternative price based on the purchase price, intended for selling individual packs (units). The markup is defined to be 60% in that case, which yields:
  1. 20 € purchase price + 60 % = 32 € sale price,
  2. 32 € sale price / 10 units = 3.20 € per unit sale price,
  3. 3.20 € unit sale price + 20% VAT = 3.84 € final unit price for the customer, opposed to 3.12 € unit price with the default price.

How It Appears to Users

When searching for the item, the users will have two choices - to use the item with the default pricing (whole box meant to be sold in our case) or with the alternative pricing (single pack or several packs meant to be sold in our case). The alternative price is displayed under the main price with an indent, and the name is added to the product's name.

Removing Alternative Prices

You can remove an alternative price from an item using the red 'Alternative price' button on the right side of the alternative price row. Note that this price will also be removed from any estimates or item templates that use it, but won't be removed form consultations or invoices.

See also

Using Items with Alternative Prices