Price books

A price book is a catalog of list prices for items, tools, or services. It contains the published base price, or list price, which can vary depending on the customer and the situation. Price books prices are used in the calculation of prices for materials, services, or tools on work orders, and in the calculation of recurring costs on billing schedules.

You create and revise price books in the Price Books application in the Inventory module. A price book list price is the starting point for prices involving items, tools, or services. Discounts and markups specified in customer agreement price schedules and billing schedules are applied to the list price in a price book to calculate the actual price that the customer is charged. For example, a price schedule might specify that in most situations, under this agreement, a customer receives a 15 % discount from the list price, and in special situations, the customer receives a 30% discount. For example, if the service is required at a location that is close to the service provider, then the discount might be increased to 30% when the price is calculated. If the call is at night, then the discount might be decreased to 10% when the price is calculated. You can have multiple price books as starting points. The actual prices for customers are calculated based on the list prices in the price books and any applicable markups or discounts according to price schedules or billing schedules in the customer agreements.

Each customer has at least three price books. There must be a price book for tools, a price book for items, and a price book for services. Additional price books can be created in each of these categories as well. For example, you might have a gold-level tool pricing and a silver-level tool pricing.

With a price book, you can easily increase or decrease the prices of all of the items, tools, and services included in an agreement. For example, if you want to increase your prices over a specified time period (for example, over a holiday) then you might create a price book for that time period. You might increase all of your prices in that book by 5%. All of the discounts and markups specified in customer agreements would still be applied, but the base price used in the calculations would be 5% higher. You can also select individual items, tools, or services to mark up or discount the prices for.

You can add items, tools, or services to a price book, depending on the price book type. For example, if the price book type is Tool, then you select tools and add tools to the price book. Regardless of whether you are adding tools, services, or items, you use click New Row or Select Items to add the tools, services, and items. The options available for selection are filtered based on the type of price book. You can further filter the list to find the items, services, or tools that you want to add. You can add items to a price book only after it has been saved and only if it is in DRAFT or PNDREV status. A price book is in effect when it is approved and during the time specified by the effective date and end date.

The lines for items, services, or tools listed in the Items table include the following price values:

The Customer Agreement tab shows all of the customer agreements that reference the selected price book. The Price Schedules tab shows all of the customer agreements that have price schedules that reference the select price book. The Billing Schedules tab shows all of the customer agreements that have billing schedules that reference the selected price book.