Learn about how to manage different pricing scenarios in Blue Link ERP. This demo video includes information about pricing contracts, groups, discounts, promotions, quantity breaks and more.
Transcription
0:00 – 0:20 Alright, well we may as well get started because we don't want to hold anybody up who has joined us today for this training session. So, thanks everybody who is participating. Once again, we do plan on recording this. So, assuming all goes well, we will be able to send this out for you to watch again or share with other people on your team.
0:21 – 0:40 Today, we will be having a presentation from Michael Benedick, who will be talking about different pricing scenarios in Blue Link. So, if you have any questions, feel free to just message them in the chat. And then the plan is to get through them either during the presentation or at the very end. So, without further ado, I will let Michael get started.
0:41 – 1:40 Good afternoon, everyone. Hope you're staying safe and having a good day, so far. What we're going to do is talk. What we're going to talk about today is like Sam said, is pricing scenarios and there are a few things that we're going to talk about. Basically, there's a number of different prices and methods in learning that can be set up and used. We're going to actually show you how to set up some of those different methods in the system. We're going to show you how they get, how they impact the price on the sales order. And just so that you guys know, I'm still adding people to the chat as we go through, but anyway and then we're going to have some questions at the end. Samantha is going to keep track of my time. As some of you may know I get long winded sometime. It's going to keep track of my times that we have enough time to answer questions at the end. So let's talk.
1:41 – 2:03 So let's before we go any further, I'm going to actually switch my screen to Blue Link. Hopefully everybody can see Blue Link. Sam if you can just let me know and then what we're going to do is So what we're going to do is we're going to start off and basically just talking about some of the different prices that can be set up in the system.
2:04 – 2:38 So, I'm in the inventory maintenance screen most of time. Pricing can be actually set up in here. So, Michael, we're just seeing the agenda right now. Oh, it didn't switch. No. OK, just one second. That’s why I asked you. There, that's better. OK. So again, sorry, so we're in the in Blue Links inventory screen right now. This is where most of the pricing can be set up or at least associated too.
2:39 – 3:16 So let's talk about a couple of them that we're going to go through. So of course, we should all know about the UOM pricing this is one of those products are, you know, prices that have to be set up in the system. We have something called price matrix. We're going to talk about that in a little bit, a little bit further discount quantities, again details there. There's pricing contracts and these are all specifically set up in Blue Link on the, from the inventory side of things, there's also a couple other places that you can use or maintain or manage pricing.
3:17 – 3:56 Of course, we can all change a discount on a sales order, or we can actually change the discount of a line of the sales order. And if you are one of those industries that allows negotiation of prices, I can always change the price, right on the sales order itself. Be aware that when you're in a sales order, you know the system is keeping track of those prices. So, when I go to and it's keeping track in what we would call our change log, you change log. So not everybody's going to have access to this. It's going to depend on what permissions you have in the system, what security stuff you might have in the system.
3:57 – 4:24 But you can see here earlier today I was playing with changing of discounts on a specific sales order or deleting a line. That kind of information is going to be tracking the system along with who actually changed it and when in the system just so that you're aware you know that that is actually in the system. So, let’s actually talk about some of the specifics. Mm, you know of the pricing in the system.
4:25 – 4:53 So, the first thing you'll see here is we call it discount pricing or UOM pricing. There are multiple prices that you can actually or multiple currencies that you can see here. I have a US and Canadian setup. You can also see here that I have another US currency setup and the effective date is August 1st.The system allows me to set up a specific price in the future and then when that specific day shows up.
4:54 – 5:17 So for instance, as of today, the price is going to be $10.22 for this particular product, but after or on or after the 20 or August 1st, it's going to actually go into $12.76. This allows you the ability to enter in updated prices now for the future, so you don’t have to worry about doing it over that weekend like older systems used to have to do. OK.
5:18 – 5:49 These prices are used in a number of different places when we're calculating discount or the matrix price or the price breaks. So, as we're going through these different pricing scenarios’, with the exception of contract pricing, which we're going to also talk about, it's going to actually use these UOM prices in the system. Now I say UOM prices, because if there's multiple UOMs there's different prices set up for each one of them in the system.
5:50 – 6:17 The next thing that I want to talk about is, is matrix or the price matrix in the system. Many times, somebody, you know, many times customers are talking to me, prospects are talking to me about saying, look, we have a number of pricing discount levels that are set up in the system and we actually associate different customers with different groups of customers. The different discount levels. This is exactly what price matrix will allow you to do.
6:18 – 6:58 So if I go into the drop down here. What you can do in price matrix is you can set up as many different price matrixes, for instance description or groups of products that you want to set up in the system. You can then associate the various discounts or nine different levels in the system and then when you associate this particular product to a level. So, for instance I can actually say here level or product three as an example, it's now going to use discount Level 3. Yeah. Or discount grouping three for this particular product.
6:59 – 7:40 In the customer information so, if I go to customer now, with this particular product, it's associated under the matrix level. So now this particular customer Black Eyed US is getting price level 2 or price Level 3 I should say for all products that are associated to anyone of the different matrixes. So, he would actually be getting Level 3 discount. Just going to close some of this stuff. So that's the pricing matrix.
7:41 – 8:25 The discounting that comes off of here is associated to the UOM pricing, OK. So, for instance, you know if it was a 2% discount or 5% discount, it's actually coming off the specific prices here. Discount quantities are associated, they do not have anything to do with the specific customer. They are set up in the system. So, if you have quantity breaks for specific customers, you can see here that I have a quantity break of five or quantity break of ten. Again these are UOM or unit specific discounts. I can actually have, you know, different UOM with different quantity breaks for eaches versus cases in the system.
8:26 – 9:17 It also can be associated differently for different currencies that you have set up in the system and at the same time you can see here that there's three different racing discount structures that can be set up in the system. So, if I look at the percentage, what it's going to do is it's going to literally just take 2% off. If I actually order five, it's going to take 2% off the price, um the UOM price if I used a fixed discount. It’s going to actually in this situation take $2 off the fixed discount. So, if you want it to be, you know, $0.50 it would be .5 as an example .50 in the system. And the last one here I have to be very specific is this is actually telling the system what you want the price to be, so it will not even use the UOM Price anymore.
9:18 – 10:32 So, for instance if I actually say specific price $2. When someone buys, one second. When someone buys, you know, five of this particular product, they're going to get it for $2, OK. So, it's very specific. You have to, you have to be looking at that. So, let's look at and see how this would actually work in a price analysis. So, I'm going to actually just pick a customer. And if I say a case of one and I do calculate prices, it's going to actually give me the price. So, what happened here is that I did not go into the system and I did not update this if I go in and do a refresh on the inventory. And I do a recalculate. It’s actually going to give me the price matrix. Of this particular price, now 10.22 plus the 3% discount for the price matrix and this is where and then this would be the effective price of 9.91, but this particular customer would get the product for.
10:33 – 11:50 If I then go one step further and say, let's just actually use these specific pricing for a second and I say 5 here, what's going to happen now is the system is going to analyze and I'm just going to try to move this out of the way. The system is going to analyze what's the best price, either this price or the price of two. And we should all sort of know what that scenario is. OK. Now one thing that you should be aware of and you can actually see here, it actually took the $2 price from here. And the system by default, and this is one of those things that you have to be very careful about, the system by default also took the discount level or the matrix level of 3%. So even though it's 2% here or $2 here for the discount level, it's also taking the 3% off of the product matrix and therefore your end price would be $1.94 so in this system, be very careful and play with your playgrounds that you have to make sure that you know what the specific prices and the way you're going to be setting up.
11:51 – 12:30 Most customers you know from my understanding from what we've talked about don't use a number of different pricing setups. They actually use one or the other or combination, but they know what the situation so, you can actually see that in the system. Of course, if I took the, took this too, and I actually went to a fixed discount or the percentage, it would actually have adjusted this accordingly. If there's any questions, again, you can ask Samantha. If she thinks it's really important, she can ask me, but for the most part, we're probably going to answer them at the end. Yeah, so far so good.
12:31 – 13:05 I’m still getting people's chiming in, so I'm actually just trying to make sure that I'm staying on top of that. So, let's talk about. Contract pricing in itself. So, I'm going to actually go back to another product here because I had that set up in the system. It’s a little bit easier for us to actually see information, and you'll see here that contract prices can be both by setting up different quantity breaks.
13:06 – 13:24 So in this particular case, if you start using contract prices, you might not want to use these specific discounts, you can, but then it gets a little bit more complicated. You have to be careful on what's happening because the discount or the quantity breaks is going to be even added to the contract pricing.
13:25 – 13:58 The easier way to do this is to actually set up, for instance, I have a number of different contracts here, you'll see. A list for the case, this is the normal price and now the system is going to use the normal price here of $2,350 or customer that's set up on a list. So, if I go back to that customer again. And the system just so you can see where that information might come from. It’s actually being set up in here now.
13:59 – 14:34 So, for this particular customer, it's under contracts. You can see here this customer is associated to an A list to D1 and into promotions. OK, a couple of things while we're in here that you should be aware of is there are two radio buttons, one of them that says best price and one of them. Says first match, found out first price matched fund. OK you can also see here is does the price matrix get included or does it apply? These are all important fields or buttons. Because if you haven't set in different ways, system will behave differently.
14:35 – 15:12 Best price indicates that it will go through each one of these prices. It will go through any of the discounting prices in the system, and it will determine what the best price is and return that. If you ask the system to do first match found if the product is in here. It will actually return that product first or that price first. No matter if D1 is a better price for promotions that have is a better price, or even the pricing matrix is a better price, it will still look at the contract code or the first one in the system as priority the best. OK.
15:13 – 16:02 So let's actually talk about some of these, these other things that you see. So again, you know I can actually set up different quantity breaks. So, if these, if the customer is getting a quantity break of 10, you can actually see here that it would be a represent discounts. OK, now this is a 3% discount off of this. It's not a 3% discount of this. You can see here that I had when I was in the customer that there could be different contract pricing. So as an example, the customer is always my best customer, but I put promotions out sometimes and therefore I'm going to also allow him to have promotions.
16:03 – 16:54 You can see that there's expiration dates you may or may not be aware of that can actually be set up in the system. And by default, the system will say is this particular contract price applicable or not. But actually, so let's look and see in an analysis. Again, looking at that other customer, I'm just going to use black eyed two here, for a specific case of one of these eaches. See what it's showing me? First of all, the system is saying that the promotions is the best price. OK, $23. OK, it's showing me that there is a contract, a list. Um, of $23.50, but there's also a discount of 2% because of these, this price matrix here.
16:55 – 17:16 So again, be very careful when we're talking about that kind of we're using that kind of thing. You can also see here that there's a contract D pricing that's set up in the system and at the end of the day, Blue Link is using the best price. OK, let's go and use 10 as the quantity that they’re going to buy to see how it changes.
17:18 – 17:37 What you'll see now is that Blue Link still believes or has returned at the best price is for the promotions of 10 cases. You can see here that there's other information in here also with regards to the discounting that is now set up in the system.
17:38 – 17:52 So again, be very careful on how you want to set it up. And make sure that you're actually looking at the returns. Make sure that it's going to actually be set up to what you want it to be set up.
17:53 – 18:21 The last function that we're going to spend a little bit more time on is a discounting group or price group that. Mm. Is not used very often, and sometimes I think that it should be used more often. But what this is called is a price group or contract group discounting.
18:22 – 18:52 So, what I'm going to do is go into a contract, the contracts. If you don't know already, you can actually go into contract pricing, and this is where for contracts and themselves you can either enter in all the different products that are in the system or you can be entering in those products from the contract pricing on the specific products themselves. At the end of the day, it's all the same table in Blue Link so it's going to return the same information.
18:53 – 19:22 If I change something in the contract pricing panel, it's going to, it's going to adjust the inventory, still getting people coming in, it's going to adjust the, it's going to adjust, adjust the inventory side of things. And vice versa. OK, from here you can see that I can apply or tell the system who what customer do I want to be associated to my A list pricing. OK.
19:23 – 20:02 One of the things that we were just talking about is a new, not a new a pricing group that is not used very often and that can be set up in or assigned in the pricing group discounts to actually use the pricing group discounting. I have to go to system parameters and tell the system which different pricing groups that I want. So, if you go into system parameters, if you have the ability to do that, go into search for group, it's under inventory price groups and you'll see I actually have a lot of those price groups.
20:03 – 21:01 So, what does this do? It gives you the ability to group products not categories in Blue Link but group products together that you might want to associate a specific discount or markup in this case for this specific product. So, for instance if you are in the industry of selling nuts and bolts. Just to make life simple. Um, you know, nuts and bolts doesn't matter which kind they are. You know, specific size might be you might be able to get a great percentage of a great profit and you're going to give a mark up of only 3%. Therefore, you could actually put all of your nuts and bolts together and say I want a group, a price group of nuts and bolts in the system here. And then you can assign that particular group price group to your inventory, and I'll show you that in a second.
21:02 – 21:38 So, what happens is if I go into the, back into my inventory. Second, on the second page here. There is something called price group and I'm just going to go back to this other So there's something called price group. This is where the system allows me to say or this particular product or for all the products that I want to manage these specific pricing, discounts or markups, all the same, I can associate it to, in this case, a group. OK.
21:39 – 22:34 So how do we go about getting those particular discounts setup? If you go into and I'm just going to refresh this, By the way, if anybody doesn't know, um, shift F9 when you're in a panel such as that will actually update your screen for you. Anyway, back into pricing groups under discount pricing, you'll see a tab here called price group discounts. If I go in here, I’m now in the A list, OK. A list is still for that contract, but I can associate the price group of A list or A1 PG a list or a true PG and I can tell the system which discounts or markups that I want in the system. Now the system will behave as a discount.
22:35 – 23:17 So as an example, you can see here that a discount of 5% would be a discount of 5%. But if I tell the system in -1.5 or -2 is actually reversing it. So, it's going to add 2% to, you know, the price or the UOM price of A2 group and so that's exactly what it's going to do. Now you can actually do this for each one of your contract prices. So, if you have best group or best customers in A list, they could actually get a better pricing group. The same still price Group A one, but their discount could be different depending on how you want them to set up and set it up in the system, OK.
23:18 – 24:02 And before we get out of here, we can then manage and change the prices or the discounts of those by going into what we call contract with discount maintenance at the bottom here. If I go in here, you can see I'm in A list, but this gives me the ability to go into the system and save four only contracts A list as an example. I'm not going to do all of them but for contracts a list. Or whatever you want. It could be all of them, OK, or group discount, which is this. I can tell this system that I want to mark it up 0.5% or half a percent, OK.
24:03 – 24:37 So, what it's going to actually do now this particular field right here, It's going to go up 0.5% or in fact, in this case, it would actually go to 1 because we're actually adding a percent. I’d have to update. And now it actually changed the 1%. The same thing can happen if I decide to do a negative. Now in a negative, that's the opposite, which is a mark of that. So, I can actually say I want it to be marked up 2% in this particular situation and it's going to do the same thing.
24:38 – 25:38 Now, you’ll see here I can actually select the specific products too much detail for this discussion, but you can actually go in there and select the specific products in your pricing group. But in this particular situation I can say markup and now it's going to actually mark up to 3% in this situation. Really powerful once you actually figure out and learn Um, the impact of it. And I'm going to show you the impact here in a second in the price analysis, in the product. But once you learn the impact of these specific pricing, the price changes in here, it's a lot easier to actually set up your products by grouping and then you can associate it. Many times customers will talk to me about saying I do, I do a product, you know, I do a markup of a group of products. But this is exactly how you can do it. You can associate a price group to that group of products and then do a markup accordingly to what you want to be in.
25:38 – 26:39 So, I'm going to go back into. Um. The inventory in itself. OK. For this particular, this particular product, again, I actually have associated this to A1 group, OK, in this particular situation or any of the other ones I want, OK, if I go into pricing, you can actually still see all this information, but let's now look and see the impact of price analysis. So, if I do a price analysis for that same customer that I was playing with earlier. For one case, what you'll see now is a number of other products are another of other scenarios or analysis. So, you can actually see here now that it's actually taking, you know that you know about 2% in this case discount of this particular product or this or in this particular case or the contract it's actually using now the price group discount also.
26:40 – 27:03 Ok guys. Um. I don't have any other information to sort of share today. I wanted it to be sort of you know quick and dirty with you know we're sort of half hour into it now. Is there any other questions? Is there any questions that you guys have about anything that we've talked about or anything in the pricing scenarios themselves that you would want to ask questions about?
27:04 – 27:43 So, so far, no questions in the chat. But if anybody does have questions after the fact or, you know, just has any other comments about functionality, I'm going to put my e-mail in the group so that you know, later on people could always e-mail me and I could kind of point them in the right direction too. So, when I'm doing a demo and someone and there's no questions such as this, I tell, I tell that the prospects that I'm talking about, I'm either doing a really good job or I'm doing a really bad job. Really good job. And if you have any questions, by all means, I'll be more than happy to answer them.
27:44 – 28:40 So, there is a question that just came in, Michael. Um, so the question is if a customer has contract pricing, will that always be the price? Yes, it will not change until you make the change correct. Or unless or until the effective date is passed. So, in this particular situation in a contract price as an example, if for instance this is a promotion that I've actually associated with customer to allow them to actually get promotion pricing or specific products, but this is going to expire on the 31st. So as an example, or as a as a result on the 31st or on the 1st of August, these promotions would no longer be valid and therefore the system would the analysis, the analysis would be looking at other contracts or specific pricing for that for that particular reason.
28:41 – 29:09 Well, thanks very much Michael. Once again you know if anybody has questions after the price or after the fact, you can always shoot me an e-mail or just reach out as you normally would. And I do plan on putting this training session on our website. So, I will be able to send out an e-mail with that information to everybody that joined. But thank you very much. Thanks everybody. Have a great day.
