While Pronto has a built-in price recalculation function, PXI makes it easier to control the price update:
- See which prices have changed and by how much.
- Diagnose price recalculation errors.
- Calculate updates to contracts to match changes in retail prices.
- Print a list of updated shelf tickets only for products that are on the shelf.
- Adjust GST-inclusive prices to a rounded or charm price (e.g. $29.95 or $200.00).
- Upload the generated CSV pricelist to the Pronto server.
Before running a price calculation we need to export some datagrids from Pronto and save them as Excel files.
- Inventory Items datagrid
- Price Rules datagrid
- Pricelist datagrid
See the guide on exporting datagrids from Pronto for instructions on exporting these files.
To perform the price recalculations, run this command: ./pxi.py price-calc. This will import the inventory and pricing data from the datagrids, perform the price calculations, and create several files.
| File | Default location | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Price Changes Report | data/export/price_changes_report.xlsx |
Price changes report, showing price changes and recommended contract price updates. |
| Pronto CSV pricelist | data/export/pricelist.csv |
A pricelist containing only updated prices which can be imported into Pronto. |
| Tickets list | data/export/tickets_list.txt |
A plain text list of item codes which can be pasted into the Shelf Putaway Labels function in Pronto. |
| Product Price Task Data | data/export/product_price_task.txt |
Data for running product_price update using allbizsupplies/taskrunner |
| Contract Item Task Data | data/export/contract_item_task.txt |
Data for running contract_item update using allbizsupplies/taskrunner |
Once you've created a new CSV pricelist using ./pxi.py price-calc, you can upload this file to your user's home folder on the Pronto server.
Run this command: ./pxi.py upload-pricelist to upload the CSV pricelist to the Pronto server.
The price calculator uses Pronto's price rules (price algorithms) to calculate prices. Most commonly, these price rules will apply a price factor to the product's replacement cost, but a different price factor and basis can be used for each price level in the price rule.
Here's an example of a typical price rule:
| Basis | Factor | Price equals |
|---|---|---|
| C | 2.00 | Repl cost × 2 |
| C | 1.75 | Repl cost × 1.75 |
| C | 1.50 | Repl cost × 1.50 |
| C | 1.30 | Repl cost × 1.30 |
| C | 1.25 | Repl cost × 1.25 |
If a product has a price rule set on its price record, then the price calculator calculates a new set of prices based on that rule. These new prices often come to odd amounts, such as $35.02, which look untidy, so the price calculator feeds each of these prices through another function which adjusts the price to come to a nice round number, and optionally adds/subtracts a small amount to produce a charm price.
There are the rules for price adjustments:
| Price range | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| Prices below $1.00 | Round to the nearest cent. |
| Prices below $25.00 | Round to the nearest multiple of five cents |
| Prices below $99.00 | Round to the nearest five cents, and make a charm price if price is close to a multiple of $1.00 |
| Prices below $299.00 | Round to the nearest dollar, and make a charm price if price is close to a multiple of ten dollars |
| Prices below $199.00 | Round to the nearest ten dollars, and make a charm price if price is close to a multiple of ten dollars. |
| Prices above $299.00 | Round to the nearest ten dollars, and make a charm price if price is close to a multiple of ten dollars.* |
Charm prices take advantage of left digit bias, the tendency to measure a price based mostly on the left-most digit. For example, $2.95 is very close to $3, but the buyer is think of this price as closer to $2.
For prices below $99.00, the charm price is five cents below a whole dollar amount. For example, $30.02 will be rounded to $30.00 and then adjusted to $29.95.
For prices above $99.00, the charm price is one dollar below a multiple of ten dollars. For example, $151.12 will be rounded to $150.00 and then adjusted to $149.00. In addition, prices close to a multiple of $100.00 are adjusted further, so $306.00 will become $299.00.